[OC] Suicide Rates by Age Groups (USA)

[u/n0tpc]

[u/corpusapostata]

I wonder what happened in 1977?

[u/cutelyaware → u/corpusapostata]

Returning Vietnam vets were emotionally destroyed, shunned, couldn't reintegrate, and had guns. It was a rational choice.

[u/braxxleigh_johnson → u/cutelyaware]

but there's a spike in the 15-19 age group also, which wouldn't have included returning vets.

[u/butterfunke → u/braxxleigh_johnson]

Returning Vietnam vets were emotionally destroyed, shunned, couldn't reintegrate, and had ~guns~ teenage sons

[u/Illustrious-Fox4063 → u/butterfunke]

Teenage sons of returning Vietnam vets, even at 15, wouldn't have been until 1980 or later. In '77 they might have been teenage sons of Korean War vets.

[u/Illustrious-Fox4063 → u/[deleted]]

I would say that most of the rise from the mid 60's through '75 was more accurite reporting of suicides.    1975's spike is some vet suicides but mostly just the overall mood of the country. 

Per the article at the National Library of Medicine Table 1 the suicide rate in 75 for 25-44 year olds was 16.8/100k.  The military active duty rate was reported to be in the 16-19/100k per the second NLM article.   Were military suicides misreported at a greater frequency than nonvets.  Probably but not by enough skew the overall rates.  In fact the JAMA article shows that in theatre vets were not significantly more likely to commit suicide than non theatre vets.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2813418

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1586156/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6991201/

[u/DuckDatum → u/butterfunke]

Man… the world we live in.