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The Forum > Article Comments > Are you equally okay? Political discourse, inequality and suicide > Comments

Are you equally okay? Political discourse, inequality and suicide : Comments

By Rob Cover, published 13/9/2013

World Suicide Prevention Day and R U OK Day are timely reminders of the fact that vulnerability and resilience are 'unevenly distributed' in this country

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we need to continue to find ways to address the consequences of disadvantage and inequity .Jandamarra,
I don't disagree with trying to find ways to solve all problems but unfortunately, as old problems get solved new ones pop up. Many problems aren't actually problems at all, they're mere idealistic interference lacking pragmatism. They're an artificial scenario for those who thrive on problems they impose on others..
You'll find that the majority of suiciders are actually very caring & decent people for whom our problem manufacturing society offers no membership opportunities.
Remember no people do as much harm as those who go about doing good.
Posted by individual, Sunday, 15 September 2013 5:23:38 PM
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Hasbeen I've not looked into the nature of the way the genetic aspects are supposed to be transferred but a couple of points stick out from a sideline perspective.

- Having a same sex orientation does not stop someone from reproducing by conventional means in situations where they try to live as heterosexuals. Given the strong pressure that so often on people to be "straight", get married and have kids a lot of people with same sex orientations have ended up in heterosexual relationships over a long time.
- Don't know about this instance but it's my understanding that some gene's can be carried but only become dominate when combined with other gene's. Both parents may carry and pass on part of the pattern but it only completes when the bit's combine. Probably phrased that badly but I hope the point makes sense.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Sunday, 15 September 2013 8:14:30 PM
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Rob hope you are still part of the discussion.

From the look I had at suicide stats there are bunch of factors that seem to rarely register in articles and discussion of suicide as points worthy of investigation. The suicide of same sex orientated teenagers is a horror but the majority of those who suicide are not same sex orientated teens. They are mostly adult males, they are most at risk in old age (85+) and the next greatest risk brackets are from about age 25 to early 50's. I don't have the experience to comment on the 85's risks.

We have touched on OLO before regarding the strong social messages to men that they are disposable. Hard to put that into a few words.

Having been a client of CSA and having had dealings with the family law system and it's support services I'm strongly of the view that the way those systems treat men is a likely significant factor in male suicide rates in that 25 to mid 50's age bracket.

Both can be ruthless and take from a man pretty much everything he values without him having done wrong. CSA can continue the sense of helplessness and abuse for a long period. I know some women get a very raw deal as well but do think the way that happens and the dynamics are very different.

I've seen no research that seems to look directly at those issues to try to determine the impact (especially without phrasing the question in a way that appears to undermine it).

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Sunday, 15 September 2013 8:15:36 PM
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Two UK studies published this year have found strong correlations between government austerity measures and suicide rates since the GFC struck in 2008.

The studies found that countries that went down the austerity path – the US, UK, Ireland, Greece and Spain – have all reported sharp increases in suicide rates. In the UK alone, there has been an 8% rise in male suicides and 9% in female suicides since 2008, reversing a 20-year downward trend.

By contrast, Iceland and Sweden, which refused to apply austerity measures to health and social infrastructure spending (despite Iceland’s debt to GDP ratio rising to 800%), have experienced no increase in their suicide rates.

‘Recession blamed for 1000 British suicides’:
http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-business/uk-austerity/48495/recession-blamed-1000-british-suicides#ixzz2exgwE8Yq

‘Austerity is driving us to suicide, depression and causing soaring rates of drug use and HIV’:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2316624/Austerity-driving-suicide-depression-causing-soaring-rates-drug-use-HIV.html

‘Austerity has led to suicides,’ say Oxford researchers:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22345527

(A similar scenario occurred in Cuba in the early 1990s, when its economy collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Instead of cutting back on health and social spending, the Cuban government launched a largely successful campaign to make the country self-sufficient in food. In the years that followed, the physical and mental health of the Cuban population actually improved.)
Posted by Killarney, Sunday, 15 September 2013 10:55:44 PM
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As an associate professor Rob Cover has made a fundamental error in logic.

His logic goes.

Coalition = increased inequality
Inequality = increased austerity
Austerity = increased suicide
=> Coalition = increased suicide.

Unfortunately for this equation, for the 11 years under Howard, the coefficient of inequality increased slightly, but the economy grew so fast that the lowest paid incomes increased faster than any equivalent period in Australian history, and notably the suicide rate also decreased.

So Dr Rob, I would suggest you take off your Rudd tinted glasses and produce some real work instead of political propaganda.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 16 September 2013 7:17:40 AM
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This will be a couple of posts, so bear with me.
As some may recall, I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’m thinking about the things that make us human, especially trying to fit them into EO Wilson’s ideas on eusociality. Humans are a quintessentially social species and I’m coming ever more strongly to the view that humanity has many hidden group-oriented drives that are epigenetically influenced. Other eusocial species do, so why not us? Some such species are so eusocial that a colony is effectively a single organism.
For example, ant queens don’t just lay eggs willy-nilly in a mature colony. They only produce enough to replace losses and if there is a very large set of losses, egg-production rapidly increases. When there are really good conditions, she lays a lot of extras that will become “winged ants” and go out to mate with ants from other colonies to establish new ones. Then she goes back to her previous pattern. In bad years she doesn’t produce fliers and the colony size may shrink because she doesn’t replace all the losses. She is a kind of computer that senses the population density and the food supply and balances her output accordingly. Other ants have their own basic programs that do similar types of things. Prof Rodney Brooks of MIT has worked on this for the last 30 years or more, using it to inform his work on artificial intelligence.
Perhaps humans can also be thought of as being part of a super-organism? The bible, famously, exhorts us to “go forth and multiply” and we have done that very successfully for the past 300,000 years. Perhaps we are really just very intelligent ants, with somewhat more complex algorithms driving us?
Where is this going, you ask? Well, as a species we are facing a prospect of hard times ahead. Fertility in functional societies is declining, even without birth control (but I reckon it will go up a little this year in Australia) although population is still increasing because fewer children die before adulthood. Our breeders’ control algorithm is working.
[cont]
Posted by Antiseptic, Wednesday, 18 September 2013 8:52:16 AM
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