Financial despair, addiction and the rise of suicide in white America

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Financial despair, addiction and the rise of suicide in white America

Chris McGreal in Butte, Montana
Sunday 7 February 2016 13.28 GMT

Kevin Lowney lies awake some nights wondering if he should kill himself.

“I am in such pain every night, suicide has on a regular basis crossed my mind just simply to ease the pain. If I did not have responsibilities, especially for my youngest daughter who has problems,” he said.

The 56-year-old former salesman’s struggle with chronic pain is bound up with an array of other issues – medical debts, impoverishment and the prospect of a bleak retirement – contributing to growing numbers of suicides in the US and helping drive a sharp and unusual increase in the mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans in recent years alongside premature deaths from alcohol and drugs.

A study released late last year by two Princeton academics, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who won the 2014 Nobel prize for economics, revealed that the death rate for white Americans aged 45 to 54 has risen sharply since 1999 after declining for decades. The increase, by 20% over the 14 years to 2013, represents about half a million lives cut short.

The uptick in the mortality rate is unique to that age and racial group. Death rates for African Americans of a similar age remain notably higher but continue to fall.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/suicide-rates-rise-butte-montana-princeton-study

[JonathanRackham]

1. I saw this happen in the late 70s early 80s.

Steel plants in the rust belt were shutting down and a lot of blue collar people hit the wall financially.

[Warpy]

2. Gen X, mostly

because that's the age you realize that not only did you fail to get rich quick, it's just not going to happen, and all the policies you've voted for are coming back to bite you on the ass and your future is looking, well, bleak is the appropriate word. You've discovered that your body is just as fragile as everybody else's body and that working out and eating "paleo" is not going to eliminate aging and illness. Add to this the sickening realization that the game is rigged and the country no longer belongs to the citizens and the despair of not being able to change it and there's the reason for suicides, right there in a nutshell.

This is why outsiders in both parties are polling so well, they represent straws being grasped at

[magical thyme]

3. you may want to read the article

this guy built habitat for humanity housing alongside Jimmy Carter. Hard to believe he's a republican. And nothing says he expected to "get rich quick."

[Warpy]

4. Every 20 year old thinks the world is his oyster

and that wealth and success will naturally come to him. It's part of what keeps us going instead of looking at our elders and blowing our brains out.

[applegrove]

5. Also, for the majority in the South who vote Republican

and watch Fox, they do not get to enjoy living in Obama's kick ***ed country because the GOP do not allow people to connect with the government or Obama in any positive way. Used to be if you were poor and lived in America you were still a part of something amazing and powerful. You belonged. You were an American. You were something.

[kristopher]

7. +1

[kristopher]

6. Restoring democracy is Job #1.

It is key to virtually every major issue confronting us.