A new study indicates that suicide rates ebb and flow with the economy. From the story:
“Knowing suicides increased during economic recessions and fell during expansions underscores the need for additional suicide prevention measures when the economy weakens,” James Mercy, acting director of CDC’s Injury Center’s Division of Violence Prevention, said in a statement. “It is an important finding for policy makers and those working to prevent suicide.”
It’s hard to take CDC anti suicide efforts very seriously when it doesn’t speak out against suicide promotion—such as engaged in by Compassion and Choices and the Final Exit Network, and implicitly in states legalizing assisted suicide for some of its citizens.
If it really wants to oppose suicide, the CDC needs to speak out against all advocacy and policies that normalize suicide, and urge stringent suicide prevention efforts in all cases—whether their desire to end it all now is caused by cancer, fear of death by disease, disability, loss if job, business collapse, or mental illness. We can’t, as a society be for some suicides and against others. That mixed message promotes it with faint condemnation.
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