Suicide and the Unemployed--Do you know anyone who tried to snuff it? (extension, work)

[Bhaalspawn]

I am wondering whether we will begin to see a significant increase in the number of suicides in this country. What will happen when people's unemployment benefits run out and they really do have to face the prospect of becoming homeless?

I would like to hear people's stories about unemployed people they have known who decided to commit suicide to end their suffering. These types of stories don't seem to make the news at all in my town, but perhaps they do in other locales.

[WendyEF]

Yes, someone I knew blew his brains out last year. He had a wife and 3 very young daughters. So sad.

[dick1973]

ain't going to happen, Sane people will get to work. FYI, for the most part, suicides are not in the paper. Unless it is murder/suicide.

[brightdoglover]

Sure. It can be the last straw. People often come into the hospital with financial stress, foreclosure, divorce.
A local contractor killed himself in his truck near my town. The guy who built my house went into a terrible nosedive for several months as the work dried up. I got so far as to tell him that if he killed himself, his family wouldn't get life insurance, and the insurance companies are really good at catching disguised suicides.
His mood improved as a bit more work appeared, but it does seem to be his stress response.
I think if people are in financial distress, becoming homeless, unable to provide for self or for family, yes, they might well kill themselves in despair. It's truly tragic.

[bluebelt1234]

Originally Posted by Bhaalspawn

I am wondering whether we will begin to see a significant increase in the number of suicides in this country. What will happen when people's unemployment benefits run out and they really do have to face the prospect of becoming homeless?
I would like to hear people's stories about unemployed people they have known who decided to commit suicide to end their suffering. These types of stories don't seem to make the news at all in my town, but perhaps they do in other locales.

I don't think it will be suicides. Some will continue to look for work. Some will turn to crime to make ends meet. I think we can expect to see a surge in bank robberies and other criminal activities due to desperation.

[808s]

It's depressing that people would think of suicide to end their financial woes, those are the types of horror stories you hear in the news and you don't think of these things until it happens to someone you know or someone close to you.

While I don't think there will be an upsurge in suicides because of people's financial woes I do agree that crime may increase because of desperation, though I wouldn't specifically say bank robbery as that's a federal offense.

Even though in 1993 when I saw the Joel Schumacher film Falling Down as surreal as it seemed believe it or not there were a lot of people like Michael Douglas's character in that movie.

When it comes to finances people can do many strange things.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by 808s

It's depressing that people would think of suicide to end their financial woes, those are the types of horror stories you hear in the news and you don't think of these things until it happens to someone you know or someone close to you.

Imagine having large amounts of student loan debt that you cannot discharge in bankruptcy--you cannot get rid of them other than by fleeing the country--while also knowing that you are unemployable in your glutted field by virtue of having never been able to find a job in it as a result of the glut and you only saw hopelessness and misery in your future. On top of that, what if you sincerely, intellectually believed that there was no hope for an economic recovery, that your nation was headed for an economic collapse, and that employment conditions in your nation would only continue to worsen. You feel like a burden to your family and you are tired of feeling humiliated, depressed, and hopeless. You have loved ones but otherwise you have nothing in life to look forward to in life other than continued mental anguish and frustration. You soon realize that you no longer have any energy or motivation that you have more or less lost your will and desire to live. Might you then off yourself?

I think that's the mindset that some of these poor souls suffer from.

I do wonder what would happen if the barrier to ending one's life were lowered in today's climate. Suppose that suicide were fully legalized and that anyone could choose a humane, voluntary euthanasia like in the movie Soylent Green. Would the suicide centers overflow with customers? In Japan a simple and rather painless (but stinky) method involving the mixing of household chemicals to create a fatal poisonous gas became increasingly popular last year. See:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/200...panese-deterg/

Even though in 1993 when I saw the Joel Schumacher film Falling Down as surreal as it seemed believe it or not there were a lot of people like Michael Douglas's character in that movie.

I suspect that there are tons of other people out there who feel similarly hopeless and disconnected. I thought that was a great film. Funny thing is, so far those people haven't acted out on their frustrations yet. No one has even so much as taken a shot at a banker, a CEO, or a politician recently as far as I know. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have predicted that someone or a couple people would have tried to knock off or hold for ransom some bankers, CEOs, or politicians in acts of attempted murder-suicide, but it hasn't happened yet. We'll have to see what happens after the unemployment benefits extensions and Cobra subsidies end.

[DiamondDust]

When I was in my local unemployment office yesterday, I saw suicide pamphlets amongst other literature hanging on the walls, which reminded me of this thread. I thought to myself, "Wow, this unemployment thing is really serious for some people to consider taking their own lives."

[DreamingSpires]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

Sure. It can be the last straw. People often come into the hospital with financial stress, foreclosure, divorce.
A local contractor killed himself in his truck near my town. The guy who built my house went into a terrible nosedive for several months as the work dried up. I got so far as to tell him that if he killed himself, his family wouldn't get life insurance, and the insurance companies are really good at catching disguised suicides.
His mood improved as a bit more work appeared, but it does seem to be his stress response.
I think if people are in financial distress, becoming homeless, unable to provide for self or for family, yes, they might well kill themselves in despair. It's truly tragic.

Yes, it can be the last straw for some people depending on their circumstances.

Most of this suffering, in the wealthiest nation on earth, is needless. If people would reach out and help others instead of leaving them isolated out on a limb to cope with this social reality, much of the suffering could be abated. Unfortunately, in America, those who are unemployed for any reason whatsoever are made to feel that it is a result of their own "deficiencies." I see this attitude on this board all the time.

Greed and radical individualism are now the dominant paradigms in American culture, just as de Tocqueville predicted, and the national religion of course is psychology which has has infiltrated every civil and governmental institution, displacing fully any sense of objective moral order. I believe the country has gone totally wrong and--absent divine intervention--will be a Third World country within twenty years if not sooner.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by DiamondDust

When I was in my local unemployment office yesterday, I saw suicide pamphlets amongst other literature hanging on the walls, which reminded me of this thread. I thought to myself, "Wow, this unemployment thing is really serious for some people to consider taking their own lives."

It's not merely that people are unemployed.

I think that the big difference is a pervasive sense of hopelessness, a sense that the future is not going to be brighter and that "everything is NOT going to be OK", a sense that we are doomed and that life is only going to get worse.

If our nation's economy doesn't recover, and I don't think it will because we have transformed ourselves into a third world economy through an economic force called global labor arbitrage, I think more and more Americans will start to feel that way.