White Male mortality in the U.S.

[tar]

iNow,

 

The factors I am considering, is having a black president to explain the white part, and having woman's rights, and gay rights advances at the expense of males to explain the male part. What is interesting in the statistics is that native Americans seem also to be higher than blacks and Hispanics, and this is not explained by either having a black president or women's rights. Except perhaps if the male role is more dominant in White and Native American culture than in black and Hispanic culture.

 

What are the suicide statistics, I wonder, in Germany, since Merkel? Or in Israel during Meir or India with Ghandhi. Not that different cultures might not accept women in dominant roles better than others, but I would think for example that an ISIS fighter, with a sex slave or two, would be upset if he reported to a woman. German culture certainly has its background tied up with the protestant revolution and such, with the New Testament as a guiding principl.e and with the patriarchal old testament as a footing. Enough similarities with the religious footing of white anglosaxon protestants to perhaps not be surprised if there is a correlation in terms of an increase in male suicides in Germany, since Merkel.

 

I will see what I can find, along those lines.

 

Regards, TAR

From the Wiki article on suicide in the United Kingdom

"Research undertaken by The Samaritans suggested that mental-health issues of middle-aged men and loss of masculine pride and identity are also major factors behind the high rate of suicide.^[4]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom

but then again suicide in ISIS fighters has completely different motivations

or maybe not...will have to think about how control and final ultimate control at that, plays a role in suicide bombings by Jihadists and mass shooting in the U.S...does seem to be a male control thing

Lost the link, but saw that Germany suicide rates for both men and women actually went down in the last 20 years. The last ten years with Merkel as chancellor does not seem to have increased male suicide. In fact it seems that unification in general helped lower the overall numbers since the numbers were higher in East Germany than West, and I suppose people had fewer reasons to kill themselves after unification. So I have yet to find any statistics where one could look at male suicides in what was West Germany ​prior 2005 against male suicides in what was West Germany after Merkel.

(that is, I have not yet found statistics showing the 10 years before Merkel and the 10 years after)

1. germ.pdf There is this, that shows no particular increase in male suicides between 2005 and 2010. Merkel took office in 2005. So my thesis is NOT supported.

so women's rights does not necessarily explain the male part

[Ten oz]

@ TAR, suicides in Germany have been dropping for 2 decades. Evidence does not support your predictions:

 

"In Germany, the number of suicides has been decreasing for the last two decades. Whereas 13,900 people took their own life in 1990, the number fell to only 9,900 in 2012. This is a decline of 29%, as released by the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)."

http://www.bib-demografie.de/SharedDocs/Meldungen/EN/TopThema/2014_02_19_suicide_decrease.html

 

Obama is half white, raised by the white side of his family. I do not accept the the idea of a single biracial president in the history of the country explains suicide in the white male population across all age groups throughout the whole country especially considering that in various parts of the country Obama is popular even amongst whites. Vice President is white, sec of state is white, Sec of Defense is white, the majority leader is white, he Minority leader is white, etc, etc, etc.

 

Since whites make more money they tend to have more access to help care. Perhaps they issues lies in the way we treat mental health and with prescription drugs?

 

"Racial minorities are a rapidly growing portion of the US population. Research suggests that racial minorities are more vulnerable to mental illness due to risk factors, such as higher rates of poverty. Given that the burden of mental illnesses is significant, equal likelihood of mental health services utilization is important to reduce such burden. Racial minorities have been known to use mental health services less than Whites. However, it is unclear whether racial disparity in prescription drug use for mental illnesses exists in a nationally representative sample. For a valid estimation of prescription drug use patterns, the characteristic in the distribution of prescription drug use should be accounted for in the estimation model."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16278501

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

Yes that was the link I lost. It falsifies my female leader theory. I does not however falsify the black leader theory. We might be on new ground here, where we don't have a good comparson yet to make, one way or the other. We just have the correlation of increased white male suicides, corresponding with some combination of things that have happened in the recent past, where the iwhite male mortality numbers have gone up, independanly from the numbers of other racial groups or females.

 

The second link in 52 is not up to date and might not span the time we need to make any connections to psychiatric drug use. It studied the period between 1996 and 2000 and was written in 2005. Many of the indications from the study may have already be acted upon, and do not seem contemporary with the increase in the rate of white male suicides in the last 10 years.

 

Perhaps the pain killers that have resulted in so much suburban drug use and addicts that switch to heroin from the city, have something to do with the white male suicide rate increase, as that epidemic seems to be contemporary to the increase in white male suicides. And in this your study might be useful in showing that there is a chance that white males would get the prescription medication before other groups, based on whatever privilege allowed white males to get more psychiatric drugs 15-20 years ago.

 

Regards, TAR

[Ten oz]

TAR,

I been reading suicide numbers for South Africa to see if whites being displaced for power impacts they suicides.

 

*disclaimer - I don't think having a biracial President only counts as white being displayed*

 

What I have seen in very interesting. For starters South Africa has a higher suicide rate than the United States. From what I have been able to read whites had higher rates than blacks from 70'-97' but that since 00' it appears black africans in South Africa have higher rates. It isn't clear to me yet through. Some reports don't break it up into demographics, others do but don't calulate population percentages, others focus on ages groups, and the World Health Organiztion seems to have conflicting stats to the govt of South Africa itself. So I don't have any links to share but since it is your theory maybe you have find something useful looking at South Africa.

 

Back to the U.S. I did come across this :

'The suicide rate among black children has nearly doubled since the early 1990s, while the rate for white children has declined, a new study has found, an unusual pattern that seemed to suggest something troubling was happening among some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.

Suicide among children ages 5 to 11, the age range the study measured, is rare, and researchers had to blend several years of data to get reliable results. The findings, which measured the period from 1993 to 2012, were so surprising that researchers waited for an additional year of data to check them. The trend did not change."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/health/suicide-rate-for-black-children-surged-in-2-decades-study-says.html?_r=0

TAR, you said the medication link was old and prehaps changes have been made; could this be the result? More minority youths getting access to ADHD drugs and what not leading to a spike that is already documented amongst whites?

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

I had not thought of looking at South Africa. Good thought.

 

On the black children suicides, the numbers are small. They look comparable to other suicide numbers, but others are stated as per 100,000 and these are stated as per million. So you have to move the decimal point one space over to see the relative size. Not that suicide deaths in children are not even more important to understand than adult suicides, but when the numbers get smaller certain local factors could skew the numbers significantly. The HDHD drugs idea I don't think handles the numbers. Maybe there could be a connection though to our societal increase in handling every problem with a pill. And in this you might have something, if the behavioral issues of young black children, primarily young black boys entering early puberty are addressed by a psychiatric drug, which may effect normal decision making processes. But the things that jumped at me in the study were the decline in religious preventative influences among black children and the odd fact that strangulation was the biggest increased factor, among the black children. I don't know what this means, but it is suspicious. Suspicious as in wondering if some incidents were not actually suicides. It would not take but a few hundred incidents a year where the investigators were mislead, to skew the numbers. But that suspicion aside, and looking for reasons. I am wondering if such things as standardized testing could weigh on a young black b oy's self esteem. I had heard that one of the differences between the average home where the parents or a parent had gone to college and those where there was not a college graduate in the household, was the number of books in the house. This linked with the ability of the parents to help with the homework, could set up black children whose parents are not as educated, or not at home, as more in danger of poor performance on the standardized tests. Although it would not explain the high rate in males over females.

 

Regards, TAR

[tar]

No breakdown here to indicate white males . But some of the same increase in males and in children is reported in SA,

 

​http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/sa-s-shocking-suicide-statistics-1.221741

another article talked about high police suicides in SA but it specified black and Indian constables

[iNow]

So, in other words, not even in the vicinity of relevant.

[tar]

But so far SA does not seem to mirror our suicide statistics here. It seems a mess after the end of apartheid, but a mess of a different color than whatever is causing the feelings of hopelessness, sadness and loss of control over here.

 

http://leadsa.co.za/?p=18098

4. South African research found that 23.6% of teens are struggling with feelings of hopelessness and sadness

5. Teens are likely to be more impulsive when dealing with suicidal thought or behaviours

6. Research noted that more female teens commit suicide than males (Prof. L Schlebusch)

right, not even in the vicinity

[Ten oz]

@ TAR, as I had mentioned when I brought SA up I wasn't able to find clear information that I felt was relevant to this thread. It seems the suicide rate is higher in SA for Black SA than it is here in the U.S. for white males. It also seems as though Whites in SA did go through and increase from the 70's through the 90's but that has since ended. None of the numbers mirror what is happening in the U.S.. It doesn't not appear the loss of power of Whites in SA supports your view with regards to the suicide rate here in the U.S.. Besides, we know things like access to firearms and drugs do play a role. So I am not how we could mirror those satistics to SA even if we wanted to.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

Right. My theory remains just a guess.

 

Regards, TAR

[CharonY]

Apparently drug overdose is the biggest killer not only in the middle-aged white male group, but also in the younger segment:Link

[Ten oz]

@ CharonY, you are correct. iNow also mentioned the increase in drug overdoses. I have mostly focused on suicides bit the article from the OP actually references the death rate of white males and includes drugs and alcohol. So the question why? What is specific to whites that could explain this? I, perhaps naively, assume the most people in the United States have relatively similar lives. Much is made of race in political debates but on the street level most are watching Star Wars, visiting Disneyland, eating Turkey for thanksgiving, and etc. What could be so different amongst/for white males to explain this?

[iNow]

I'll speculate. Could be mistaken, but one possibility is this sequence:

 

For the last decade, non-hispanic whites were more likely to have health insurance than other racial/ethnic groups. As the recession hit, this access to doctors allowed them to be prescribed opiates and oxy pills more frequently than other groups. Addictions spiked, depressions deepened, and many turned directly to heroine as that became more available (thanks, El Chapo!). Death rates subsequently climbed, and other groups managed to avoid much of the mess since their lack of insurance until the ACA meant they far less frequently were offered that initial prescription of approved opiates and oxy's.

 

The obvious gap in that logic chain is that females tend to use opiates at the same (or even higher) levels as males, so we're left to explain the gender difference and why this phenomenon seems specific to males. My instincts tell me that the primary difference relates to social networks and coping mechanisms (wherein females tend to have tighter, better maintained, more readily available "safety nets" than men), but I'm unsure. Also, men do show higher dependence on heroin whereas women tend more often to stay within the pharmaceutical realm per the second link below.

 

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000037/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3164783/

[Ten oz]

iNow, I agree whole completely with the access to prescription dugs. Good job putting together the numbers. I had posted something similar earlier but was unable to support the tought well as you were. Add access to firearms (whites are more likely to own firearms) and there is a clear recipe for bad things.

 

Women commit suicide at lower rates across the board in every country worldwide from what I have seen. There is nothing specific to the USA about that. My guess is that it has to do with hormonal differences that impact the way humans deal with stress. There are studies out there that examine how men and women respond to physical pain/stress. So I guess the question there would be trying to figure out if or how much differently the brain handles emotional vs phyical stress.

 

"There is some experimental research that suggests the pain modulation systems between men and women may be different," LeResche says. "Females may also have an additional system that uses estrogen."

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=51160

[CharonY]

In the article it was also mentioned that it was found that doctors generally prescribed less pain medication to minority groups. Potentially as it was (wrongly and now perhaps ironically) assumed that they were more prone to drug abuse.

 

I believe the study they were referring to (or at least one of them) is: Shah et al. Med care 2015 53:12 1000-9

Edited January 18, 2016 by CharonY

[Ten oz]

@ CharonY, good call. This is something I had not considered. Not only do whites have more access to Doctors but Doctors treat them differently. This article is from 2008. Assuming the trend in unchanged the 23-37% grow in prescribing narcotics is probably anoth third worse by now.

 

 

"The study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. Prescribing narcotics for pain in emergency rooms rose during the study, from 23 percent of those complaining of pain in 1993 to 37 percent in 2005.

The increase coincided with changing attitudes among doctors who now regard pain management as a key to healing. Doctors in accredited hospitals must ask patients about pain, just as they monitor vital signs such as temperature and pulse.

Even with the increase, the racial gap endured. Linda Simoni-Wastila of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Pharmacy said the race gap finding may reveal some doctors’ suspicions that minority patients could be drug abusers lying about pain to get narcotics."

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22463720/ns/health-health_care/t/prescribing-gap-may-leave-blacks-more-pain/#.Vp1H01I0fIU

[iNow]

More here:

 

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/01/19/death-trends-update-its-all-about-women-in-the-south/

Remember that increasing death rate among middle-aged non-Hispanic whites? Its all about women in the south (and, to a lesser extent, women in the midwest). Amazing what can be learned just by slicing data.

 

I dont have any explanations for this. As I told a reporter the other day, I believe in the division of labor: I try to figure out whats happening, and Ill let other people explain why.

 

Im sure you can come up with lots of stories on your own, though. When performing your reverse causal inference, remember that people move, and, as weve discussed before, the cohorts are changing. 45-54-year-olds in 1999 arent the same people as 45-54-year-olds in 2013. We adjust for changing age distributions (ya gotta do that) but were still talking about different cohorts.

[Ten oz]

@ iNow, that is very interesting. One of the things that had been guessed in pervious posts is that perhaps not having support structures like religion and family was a factor. In surveys the South leads the country as most religious. So it would appear that religion is not a factor in limiting the deaths.

http://www.livescience.com/19317-religious-states-revealed-survey.html

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

I would not be too quick to dismiss support structures as a potential preventative measure to suicide. Having someone to talk to is important. Going just by statistics and assuming a correlation or lack of correlation, says nothing to causation.

The tie to drugs is something that the numbers suggest on the other hand, where you can assume there is something about drug use that might correlate to and cause or set up other conditions that would cause suicide, or remove a condition that would normally prevent suicide. For instance if you take drugs and choose to hurt others or steal from others to get your high, the others may be alienated from you, and hence not be there to show you love and support.

 

In a recent dinner we had in our town of Citizens Against Substance Abuse, the presenter among a lot of other information and suggestions asked a table of high school students why they did not take drugs. Their answers included of course staying away from the dangers, but the presenter pointed out that one of the very big reasons for kids that did not take drugs, was that they did not want to disappoint their parents.

 

In this, having the support of your family and friends, and school and church and police department and local government is a good thing. Just church is not the point. It is having others in your life that care about you and toward who you in turn feel responsible, that create a cadre of people that you do not want to disappoint.

 

In this, another movement in our society might be worth taking a look at. The isolation created by modern technology, that increases communication and knowledge sharing, but sets up a situation where a person might be sitting alone in their house, rather than going to a dance.

 

When I was in college I had a girlfriend who's younger sister was about to commit suicide. I talked with her all night and convinced her that I did not want her to commit suicide and it would be a terrible thing for her sister and her parents and the people that loved her, and that nothing is so bad as that it would be better to die.

 

l have not spoken to her in 40 years, but I found she is still alive by looking her up on facebook. And I feel, in my heart of heart that she still knows I care whether she lives or dies. And maybe that helped her, along the way, if she ever felt at the end of her rope, that it would disappoint me, and all her loved ones, if she on purpose, ended her life.

 

So, knowing a church community is behind you, might not be required to prevent suicide, and there might be plenty of other places to find love, than in the church, but support of one kind or another from objective reality, might still be a preventive factor, and I would not offhand dismiss the church community's role in being a possible preventative factor. Even if you are a humanist, knowing that another cares about you can give you something to live for, and at least one example of objective reality that would be disappointed if you died.

 

Regards, TAR

But this still does not account for an increase in white male suicide independant from any similiar increase in other populations. It seems we should look for some factors that exist in the white male population that do not exist in other than white male populations that has changed or is in the process of changing in the last number of years. Here I am thinking that if there are areas where white males are found in greater numbers than other areas, then changes in these areas might be related. For instance, if white males are found in greater numbers in corporate America, then changes in corporate America that would possibly cause a person of any age race or sex to be more likely to commit suicide would be seen as a statistical increase in the deaths of white males.

Any feeling of isolation or loss of control traceable to changes in a more automated corporate America for instance, where decisions are made by metrics, rather than human judgement, and you can not find the person responsible, but are just answering to the system...if such would make one more likely to commit suicide, especially combined with a lay off and the correlated loss of salary, power and control, with no one to turn to, but a faceless bureaucracy with the same metrics running the show. Combined with the across the board effects of drugs and alcohol something happening in corporate America might effect white males more than any other group, being that white males are found in higher than demographic averages, in corporate America.

this of course only if some of the white males that commited suicide were ever employed in corporate America

Edited January 23, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

@ TAR, obviously support structures are critical. I was being dismissive of religion in and of itself being a meaningful support structure. Having an imaginary friend isn't equal to having real people in ones life that care for them. Some may get that at church but simply attending church or being religious alone probably doesn't help much.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

You are right of course. Having an imaginary friend is not very empirically helpful. However in 100% of the churches I have attended there were real people there, who had actual fellowship with each other. The arguments against creationism are not the same arguments one could use against having some actual components of objective reality, namely the guy next to you at the service, that cared about you and would rather you lived than killed yourself. Disappointing god is something an atheist need not worry about. Disappointing your parents, or you pastor, on the other hand, is an actual thing you could do that is not imaginary.

 

Regards, TAR

​

[CharonY]

Well, it is somewhat to be expected. Religions typically provide some sort of community structure.

[Ten oz]

Ten Oz,

 

You are right of course. Having an imaginary friend is not very empirically helpful. However in 100% of the churches I have attended there were real people there, who had actual fellowship with each other. The arguments against creationism are not the same arguments one could use against having some actual components of objective reality, namely the guy next to you at the service, that cared about you and would rather you lived than killed yourself. Disappointing god is something an atheist need not worry about. Disappointing your parents, or you pastor, on the other hand, is an actual thing you could do that is not imaginary.

 

Regards, TAR

​

Well, it is somewhat to be expected. Religions typically provide some sort of community structure.

Yet the stats provided by iNow show that the southern states and Midwest have higher rates of suicide. Specifically for white females. Hose areas are the most religious in the country. I provided a link impost #68. So religion isn't providing enough of a structure apparently.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

But white females is not what we are trying to figure out, so the link to the church in the south, one way or the other is not a one to one correspondence in terms of white male suicides.

 

Perhaps one could suggest that white males do better when the church is around, especially compared to white females, but I think the stats you provided are not directly attributable to white male suicides, as they did not point to a increase or decrease of white male suicides because of religion. Or anyway you would have to explain why the lack of religion caused white males to not commit suicide and the presence of religion caused whifemales to commit...any way, I think the causes of or the preventions of white male suicides are not easily gleened from the numbers of southern white female suicides, You would have to lay it out better for me to see the connections.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited January 25, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

Ten Oz,

 

But white females is not what we are trying to figure out, so the link to the church in the south, one way or the other is not a one to one correspondence in terms of white male suicides.

 

Perhaps one could suggest that white males do better when the church is around, especially compared to white females, but I think the stats you provided are not directly attributable to white male suicides, as they did not point to a increase or decrease of white male suicides because of religion. Or anyway you would have to explain why the lack of religion caused white males to not commit suicide and the presence of religion caused whifemales to commit...any way, I think the causes of or the preventions of white male suicides are not easily gleened from the numbers of southern white female suicides, You would have to lay it out better for me to see the connections.

 

Regards, TAR

You are correct. Nothing I am writing speaks to white male suicide and religion. iNow's think sliced the increases in suicide up deeper than other stats we had reviewed before did. It basically links the increase on white female suicide to the overall increase in white suicide. So while males still make of the majority of suicides it is actually white females in the south and Midwest that are driving the overall numbers up. Also, I am not saying religion hurts. I am saying it doesn't statistically appear to help. At least not in terms of number up churches or the percentage of a specific population that claims to be religious.