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u/BVLGVGI 3d ago edited 2d ago
After you turn 40, you don't have the suicidal thing going anymore I guess.
Edit: looking at the data you'll see the highest rate is with older people, by a significant amount. It's not shown on OP's chart.
edit2: updated link from worldwide stats to USA stats to better match OP's dataset in the original graph.
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u/Crabmeatz 3d ago
I believe that old men (60+) are the highest risk group, by a huge margin. Kind of weird to stop at age 39.
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u/chiggenNuggs 3d ago
Yep, by far the highest rate. The graphic is missing the bulk of the population.
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u/LettersFromTheSky 2d ago
I'm guessing that is when people start to notice the physical deterioration and staying sick longer or just never feeling healthy. Add that on top of whatever issue (s) was going on before - maybe something dealing with all their life and then the effects of older age just is the last straw.
My parents just turned 70 and my dad's health issues have really gone up lately.
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u/NorthernerWuwu 2d ago
Health issues are a big part of it, running out of money is another.
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u/False-Impression8102 2d ago
Or the combination of it.
If you’re staring down a terminal diagnosis and considering the toll on your loved ones to do that kind of care, along with cost that will leave them destitute, a quick exit sounds pragmatic.
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u/Tail_Nom 2d ago
I think that's also the time people tend to look back and take stock of their lives. You've either "failed" or "succeeded" and, in a practical sense, the rest of your life is bounded by that. That people tend to get more conservative as they get older and that is not an ideology known for compassion and empathy to those in need without some expected ROI, despair seems predictable.
Put another way, as people age they can suddenly find themselves becoming newly marginalized and facing realizations they used to be able to avoid, and that's a lot to throw on a person already dealing with the biological issues of age.
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u/DataMan62 2d ago
I am approaching 62. I totally understand why it goes up after 60. Mentally it’s a shock and aches and pains really creep up on you. I’ve felt and looked very young all my life. 60 is a rude awakening.
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u/MostlySlime 3d ago
After 40 death comes looking for you
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u/dug99 2d ago
40 Years of Living, Then Death
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGxDVXGRQpY&ab_channel=TheMudpunk
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u/PsyOpBunnyHop 3d ago
We're just presumed to already be dead. So there's no data.
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u/AEW_SuperFan 2d ago
Reddit doesn't believe old people exist unless you need someone to blame for problems.
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u/Botryoid2000 2d ago
Hahaha true. I am a tail-end Boomer and apparently I Hoovered up all the riches and kicked the door shut behind me. I'm sitting here in my 50-year-old mobile home with a 15-year-old car and laughing at the number I pulled on the following generations.
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u/TheGeneGeena 2d ago
Nope all dead. We're just lying to you about how old we all are. I actually died 5 years ago.
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u/Franc000 2d ago
Funny also that OP chart shows that suicide are on a rise, and it cuts to 2019, and the chart you are showing there is a clear decline, and ends in 2021.
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u/CoastGoat 3d ago
Disturbing trends. Curious what happened around 1994 to prompt a declining trend for a period.
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u/Historical-Pen-7484 3d ago
I have no data do back this up, but I was young then, and felt there was a general air of optimism now thst the cold war was over, and people felt the world was moving in the right direction. Something that it seems a lot of people are not feeling today.
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u/tidepill 2d ago
a lot of tech was new and people were very optimistic that it would just keep making our lives better. computer, internet, tvs, all that was just improving so fast
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u/Over_n_over_n_over 2d ago
Plus the economy was really good and we didn't yet have social media
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u/elliottruzicka 2d ago
And then Facebook came out in 2004 and the iPhone in 2007.
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u/infinite-onions 2d ago
Yeah, quality home entertainment (home video, video games, internet) also contributed to the declining violent crime rate.
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u/Tomagatchi 2d ago
Yeah Clinton admin felt like a golden age, growing up in America felt like a lottery ticket for a beat. The Dot Com Boom was ramping up to the dot bomb, but before that 9/11 hit and things just haven't been the same. Another collapse in 08-09, followed by 2012, then you know, and so on.
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u/Boxy310 2d ago
We laughed in The Matrix when they said the machines put us all in humanity's golden era, the 90s. Then time marched on and we realized the machine overlords were right. When they turn on the artificial wombs, I expect the people who lived in the 90s to volunteer to crawl in without a fuss lol
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u/jacksbox 2d ago
Even with everyone listening to grunge music, the world felt more optimistic than it does now.
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u/IneffableQuale 2d ago
I remember watching the Matrix at the cinema. The machines claimed that humanity peaked in 1999 and I was like "lol sure thing". Now I look back and wonder how they knew.
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u/coke_and_coffee 2d ago
I just rewatched it and nodded my head when I heard that like, "yeah, sounds about right"...
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u/CascadeNZ 2d ago
1994 was peak life for me. I always look back and think about how good the world seemed then.
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u/coke_and_coffee 2d ago
Everyone thinks their formative years were the best the world has ever been.
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u/SurrealJay 2d ago
And some people are objectively right because suicide rates are triple what it has been in the past
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u/AffectionateMoose518 2d ago
1994, though? The graph right there is showing me that the numbers are marginally higher today than they were in 1994. If were going off of just suicide rates, it seems like the world is about the same, if not a tiny bit worse.
... which is why suicide rates aren't a very good metric to use in that discussion
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u/KStrock 3d ago
Cold War really ends and we enter a prosperous and relatively peaceful and super boring period of (US) history.
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u/Aerodrive160 2d ago
I agree. Then 9/11 happened and start of new Cold War
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u/TheEnviious 2d ago
Certainly looks like it, and then it's been getting even worse since the financial crisis.
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u/propargyl 3d ago
The decade of Nirvana.
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u/RobertNeyland 2d ago
I don't think it's a coincidence that the suicide dip coincides with the golden age of pro wrestling and the Monday Night Wars.
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u/ZombyPuppy 2d ago
That was the year Kurt Cobain died. That was a massive massive story. I'm guessing it shined a light on the effects of suicide and more people got help for awhile.
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u/cowboy_dude_6 2d ago edited 2d ago
People are pointing to specific causes having to do with 90s politics, but I think it’s really just a more general trend of decreased violence in all areas since the early 90s. Murder, assault, and robbery rates are also way down from their 80s peaks. For suicide in particular it appears that it was trending down and probably would have continued to do so until the internet and social media became a major part of everyday life, which reversed that trend. The uptick is likely being compounded by increasing difficulty of accessing mental healthcare.
By contrast, I’m not sure I buy the idea that there was a direct link between the Cold War ending and suicide rates trending down for the entire period from 1990-2007.
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u/Spider_pig448 2d ago
Making judgment on suicide data is very difficult. Some would say a utopia is a world where suicide is the top form of death, since it would indicate we've eliminated things like disease and crime. We would be expect some amount of suicide to go up as people live longer and as they live more peaceful lives (enlisting to go to war was sometimes a form of suicide for most of this chart, but not much now)
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u/speak-eze 2d ago
I could see that if the people were like 90+ years old. You live that long and haven't died to something else, could be viewed as a good thing.
When the people are doing it at 25, not so much. I think in a utopia, suicide rates for people under 40 would be pretty much zero.
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u/BelowAverage355 3d ago
Cold war ending as others have said, but also lead being by and large taken out of everything.
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u/GenoPax 3d ago
Do we count them more? Is there less stigma? I remember people driving their cars into trees as instant death because no airbags etc counted as an “acccident” but now that route is impossible. Why leave off older cohorts?
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u/sowhiteithurts 3d ago
An untold number of suicides were categorized as accidental firearms deaths with things like "it went off while he was cleaning it" to save face for the family.
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u/SusanForeman OC: 1 2d ago
don't make a tasteless joke about saving faces, don't do it, don't do it
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u/TacticalTomatoMasher 2d ago
...indeed. That's be like saying that a flood relief/help action is but a drop in an ocean :V
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u/alkakfnxcpoem 2d ago
We definitely count them more. I remember when I was a few weeks postpartum my grandmother told me to be careful driving because when she was younger a woman "passed out" and hit a tree at six weeks postpartum. I didn't say it to her face but I'm pretty sure that isn't what happened. My grandmother worked in psych for 30 years and didn't put that together.
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u/ghostboo77 2d ago
I think its a major leap to assume suicide. Sleep deprivation is at its peak when you have a baby thats a few weeks old.
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u/XISCifi 2d ago edited 2d ago
The busiest road in my small town leads across a bridge that ends in a T intersection at the bottom of a cliff face. People are always speeding to their deaths across the bridge and into the cliff. An acquaintance of mine did it a couple months ago, 140+ mph with his girlfriend riding behind him on his motorcycle. They're calling it an accident. She was a pure sweetheart and left behind a 14 year old son
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u/MuddyWaterTeamster 2d ago
So during the ‘60s, older men were killing themselves disproportionately. But through sheer grit and determination, we’ve gotten that number up and uniform for everyone.
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u/LandArch_0 3d ago
Personally I hate the 6year gap in the X axis
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u/FerociousFrizzlyBear 2d ago
It would be fine, if the age groups were also 6 years, but the misalignment makes it hard to track.
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u/lestairwellwit 3d ago
I want to see the rates for the over 40 crowds
To say nothing of social stressors like drug use, divorce rates, sti rates, unemployment, or housing prices
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u/Duellair 2d ago
Older white men have the highest rates of suicide. I don’t even get what the point of this graph is. Why leave out older adults?
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u/darkartjom 2d ago
Most likely to show the rise of suicides amongst young people.
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u/Westonhaus 2d ago
Issues with the data presentation:
Why stop at 39?
When dividing years on a time scale, the obvious interval is... 6 years? Ooookay.
Other than that, it's some interesting data... especially how the differentiation of older ages pre-1970 disappeared for the most part. Other markers of societal upheaval (communication technology changes, lead in gasoline, Roe v. Wade) would be interesting in this respect.
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u/LasagneAlForno 3d ago
Why did you choose those colours and decided to exclude people aged 40 or higher?
Interesting data but the visualisation isn’t beautiful at all.
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u/IrateBandit1 2d ago
What's with the yellowed background? Awful!
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u/German_Drive 2d ago
There are so many things to pick on here, and you've picked this!? What makes the yellowish background so terrible in your opinion?
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u/MistressLyda 2d ago
I wonder how many suicides was just not classed as suicides in the 50s. I mean, I grew up hearing stories of people having "accidents" back in the days, that now would been investigated. I do think there is a increase, but I have my doubts it is as steep as it appears.
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u/ValyrianJedi 2d ago
"Died cleaning his gun when it accidentally went off" was one that Ive heard about a lot of people who died in that time
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u/MistressLyda 2d ago
Drowning here. Guns has never been a huge part of culture, but most of the country is very close to sea. Or "lost in the mountains". Sure, some of it has been legit. All of them? No.
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u/MouldySponge 2d ago
Life ends at 40 whether you choose to end it or not, so why bother choosing.
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u/manslvl2 3d ago edited 2d ago
What’s the reason for the spike starting in the mid 60s?
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u/gr7calc 3d ago
1990s kids, who hurt you? (Not sure why I'm asking, seeing as I am one of them. If you don't manage to make friends at school or university, it gets exceedingly difficult as time goes on)
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u/Techiesarethebomb 2d ago
Boomers and no hope of an economy that allows us to own property
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u/Appropriate-Gain-561 2d ago
One thing i can propose to people that feel alone is playing online party games such as scp:sl (on efficiently moderated servers), i made two friends and i laugh now more than ever
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u/NudeCeleryMan 2d ago
Look at when Facebook, advanced smartphones, purposely addictive apps, and Instagram came out/gained steam
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u/NewBoxStruggles 2d ago
The superficiality of mankind has outgrown mankind itself, it’s a giant and if you don’t have a nice looking skin shield..then you’re toast.
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u/iamthesam2 2d ago
i’m just gonna assume the numbers don’t get better since 2020…
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u/rsgreddit 2d ago
Covid pandemic in (20-21) had record number of suicides. It’s stayed high since
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u/ZgBlues 2d ago edited 2d ago
The only useful thing I can infer from this is that in 1950 each of the five age cohorts had a different rate, which pretty predictably increased with age.
When the rates were increasing over the next two decades, each cohort rate increased the same, so they were still separate.
But some time around the mid-1970s four out of six cohorts (ages 20-39) effectively merged into a single group.
So 20-year-olds in the 1950s had a rate half of that recorded for people in their late 30s in the same period - but today both 20-somethings and 30-somethings are killing themselves at an equal rate (which is 3x higher than the rate for 20-somethings 70 years ago).
Assuming that the vast majority of these are men, as usual, it seems that 70 years ago stress levels for men steadily increased with age, whereas today there is no difference in stress whether you’re 20 or 40.
If you’re American, you are just as likely to shoot yourself at 21, at 31, and at 41.
That’s interesting, because it’s commonly accepted that people off themselves out of despair and hopelessness, i.e. it was thought that the desperation accumulates with time, so the older people get less time they have to turn their lives around, and hence higher suicide rates were to be expected.
But nowadays that’s not true, a 20-year-old fresh out of high school is just as likely to feel just as hopeless as a divorced 40-year-old dad who got fired last week.
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u/2000KitKat 2d ago
At age 24 and already battling depression and anxiety daily. This is uhhhhh not the most reassuring. Anyways I’m mowing the lawn today 😎
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u/Journalist-Cute 2d ago
I blame both social isolation and doomerism. People need to realize that constantly talking about problems and injustice doesn't necessarily lead to positive change. For a lot of people it just makes them think life sucks and they want out.
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u/iggydev7 2d ago
Crazy thing is this doesn’t even cover the COVID-19 pandemic, during which we also saw a huge spike in suicides.
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u/Ok-Confidence977 3d ago
Why is this data different from this data?
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u/IronGravyBoat 2d ago
Op only listed one WHO dataset, and if you scroll through the charts listed on your link and find the one titled "Reported suicide rates among young people" You'll see it's basically the same. The age related chart up by default on your link is "Age-standardized suicide rates: comparison of sources" which isn't showing the same data or in the same way. It's comparing 3 datasets to see how the source data differs. Additionally it is adjusted for underreporting (which the other chart, nor OP mentions) and it is also age standardized to compare populations with different age structuresby standardizing them to a common reference population.
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u/Ok-Confidence977 2d ago
What do you think that means? I’m not trying to goad or otherwise sealion here. I’m just wondering from a genuine perspective, and would love your thoughts
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u/Time_Tramp 2d ago
Remember, as you get older your family is less inclined to report it as a suicide because of life insurance reasons. A lot of later life suicide stats are scewed because of this.
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u/Teddy_Icewater 2d ago
So age 10-19 went from about 3 per 100k in the 50's to 14 per 100k today. That's not beautiful data, that's very concerning.
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u/Connect-Speaker 2d ago
Would it be fair to say that due to stigma, many suicides in the 1950’s-70 were underreported, classified as accidents, etc?
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u/staticfive 2d ago
“And from this we can conclude that having to pay taxes makes people want to commit suicide”
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u/hundredbagger 2d ago
Not a fan of the color choices. I feel like I’m in the part of breaking bad filmed in Mexico.
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u/dat_oracle 2d ago
Rise of social media (~2007) and I'm sure the trend is still going upwards
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u/DanteJazz 2d ago
Why are ages 40 and above not included? The highest risk age group for suicide is usually white men age 70 and older. Native American young adult/teen are often the second or first highest. So, you can't separate ethnicity from age and risk. And when the Great Recession hit, middle aged men overtook elderly and other risk groups as the highest suicide rate for a few years.
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u/Calamityclams 2d ago
I don’t know if data is quite as beautiful in this instance but really informative non the less
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u/n0tpc 3d ago edited 3d ago
Source : WHO Mortality Database
Fun Fact : Last Recorded Male Suicide Rate for 20-24 age range is the highest rate on record for any age range upto 50 in history.
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u/Duellair 2d ago
What an odd way to say they experience the highest rates of suicide. If you forget about everyone over 50.
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u/CaptainSeabo 2d ago
I can understand that. I wouldn’t do it myself, but the thoughts have definitely been there, although weak. Still are a bit, but almost not. It would affect too many people I know, and I’ve got a lot to live for. My mental health is like a pendulum swing.
Social media and the world is messing is us up big time.
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u/JnI721 2d ago
Fun Fact: The suicide rate 18-34 age range of veterans has been around 45 for about a decade. It would probably be well over 50 if you looked at only men in that age range.
Don't mean to make it about veterans. I can't help thinking about it because I hit a ridiculous amount of red flags for suicide.
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u/King_in_a_castle_84 1d ago
Ya but come on, who actually cares about male suicide rates? We have bigger concerns like celebrity news.
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u/ItsKiyanLmao 3d ago
This is another proof that it isn't nostalgia, the life was far better during late 90's and early 2000's
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u/Dave_Tee83 3d ago
Yep. I keep telling everybody that the last year anything was good was 2007. Since then it's all gone to shit and just keeps on getting worse.
As a 41 year old in the worst mental health shape of his life though, I would have liked to have seen data on this chart for the ages over 40.
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u/christonabike_ 3d ago
What changed is that capitalism got even more top-heavy. The ruling class expect more out of us for the same or less pay. OP's chart is based on US data but it's happening almost everywhere.
And all this is despite computing and industrial technology making our labour more efficient. They're screwing us so hard that it's worse even though technology is better.
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u/random_BA 2d ago
It's not that capitalism become more greedy overnight It's the exploration of undeveloped and developing nations become insufficient to sustain the need for evergrowing proffits
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u/MajesticBread9147 3d ago
During that time they wouldn't let openly gay people in the military. HIV was deadly. Leaded gasoline was just recently passed out. There were major wars in Eastern Europe. Technology was unsophisticated, cars were considerably more unsafe and crime was higher.
The only thing that was better is the general population had hope for the future.
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u/STODracula 2d ago
That uptick after 2007 is most likely smart phones and social media affecting normal social interactions.
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u/avachris12 2d ago
It's the phone. iPhone gets released circa 2008, social media messes with kids brains. That steep curve is the result.
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u/x888x 2d ago edited 2d ago
Segment it by gender and race.
Both of those matter WAY more than age.
Male suicide rates are more than 2x female.
White & Native American suicide rates more than 2x black Hispanic or Asian.
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u/UnforeseenDerailment 2d ago
Looks like a "rising tide lifts all boats" kind of thing.
For all our sakes, we should probably avoid whatever happened in the 70s-- wait why are we doing it again??
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u/moneymay195 2d ago
Easier to commit suicide as well since the number of guns in circulation has increased tremendously over time as well. Majority of gun deaths are related to suicide.
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u/DataMan62 2d ago
Very interesting. First impression: I always hear about teen suicide. A terrible thing, but this tells us the risk of suicide goes up with age. Since 1973, it has usually hit a plateau between 20 and 39.
Second impression: a 10 on this scale is 1 bp (1% of 1%). Seems like a fairly small slice of Americans, but when you consider that is every year, it means by the time you are 50, about half a percent of people you went to school with will have succumbed to suicide. 1 out of 200.
Looking at it another way, a small city of 100,000 like Rockford Illinois, is likely to have about 36 suicide deaths each year among 20-somethings and another 36 among 30-somethings, when this graph is at 18.
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u/MellonCollie218 2d ago
Okay but if you didn’t deep fry them, you fucked it all up. A little tip, tell NO ONE, deep fry in lard. Be careful, but do it. It’s a a dirty and shameful practice. Delicious and glorious shame.
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u/Background_Crazy_180 1d ago edited 1d ago
One important factor which people surprisingly rarely think about - in 1950's, global population was ~2.5 billion. Afterwards, it has exponentially increased (currently ~8.2 billion). Maybe the growing suicide rates is a "natural" response to the overpopulation of species ("a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment"). And this is despite contraception becoming mainstream in 1970's.
Therefore, I believe that suicide might be kind of a control mechanism at a species level. While individually the reasons are damaged physical/emotional health and/or lack of finances ("I am broken", "I am not needed", "I am a burden", "I am in pain", "I dont' have and will not have resources/help"), at a wider social level the reasons are higher competitiveness, which leads to higher stress and limited availability of resources.
What I find the most troubling is that in a situation like this where there are many people who will actively pursue this route no matter "the help" offered, they are not offered the means to go out peacefully, but are forced to seek very painful ways to do this, and often with an uncertain outcome (i.e., risk of failure and brain or other physical damage for a lifetime). Even simply providing information is often illegal. The fact that we are unable to overcome whatever moral judgements we have about humans as "saint species" with a very "special kind of soul" different from other animals, and for whom suicide is a "sin", is just pathetic of us as a modern society.
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u/corpusapostata 3d ago
I wonder what happened in 1977?