UPDATE
I decided to add into the discussion a related post on suicides in the US Military
Brief Summary
Nearly half of those serving in the U.S. military have contemplated suicide since joining the forces, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) Members 2022 report. This is a huge jump up from the nine percent that said they had thought about taking their own life before signing up.
To put this into context, estimates currently put the figure of suicides among active duty personnel and veterans of the post 9/11 wars at 30,177 - a high number, especially when considering that 7,057 U.S. service members were killed in war operations in that time.
In the blog that I am developing for a Lake County Ohio Commonweal Local Community, I am putting together posts relevant to Mental Health since we have a Mental Health Levy on the ballot for November. This one is on suicide.
I found statistics on most common causes of death were a very interesting way of looking at things, not only for suicide but also for preventable accidents as well as COVID.
SUICIDE
While Suicide was the 11th most common cause of death in 2021, at 48,183 deaths it was far below Heart Disease (695,547), Cancer (605,213) Covid (416,893) and Unintentional Injuries (224,938) in actual numbers.
Nevertheless, for Age 10-14 and Age 25-34, suicide was the second most common cause of death. For Age 15-24 suicide was the third most common cause of death, and for Age 35-44 the fifth most common cause of death.
At Age 35-44, Covid, Heart Disease, and Cancer in additional to unintentional injury caused more deaths. However, the number of persons committing suicide was only slightly less than for Age 25-34.
By Age 45-54, suicide became the seventh most common cause of death, and by Age 55-64, the ninth most common cause of death while having about the same number of deaths each year.
So, for persons under age 35, their families and friends, suicide should be a matter of concern and remain a concern after age 35 although other causes of death will begin to take center stage.
Unintentional Injuries (PreventableAccidents)
Until age 45, preventable accidents are the leading cause of death. The are mostly poisoning, falls and automobile accidents. From age 45-64 preventable accidents were supposed by Heart Disease, Cancer (and during the pandemic) COVID-19.
Since shorty before the pandemic, poisoning have increased dramatically because of the opioid crises. It is interesting that falls and automobile accidents cause about an equal number of deaths. While I was aware that I might die from an automobile accident, I did not realize that falls could cause death not simply impairment.
COVID-19
While attention during the pandemic was focused upon the elder/y, in 2021 COVID-19 was the leading cause of death for those Age 45-54!
By Age 55-64 although there were more COVID-19 deaths than in the Age 45-54 group, heart disease and cancer were causing many more deaths.
In the Age 35-44 group, COVID -19 was the second leading cause of death because heart disease and cancer were not causing many deaths. COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death for Age 25-34.
So while most of the deaths from COVID-19 were among the elderly, the death threat from COVID-19 was actually far more widely spread among the age groups
I have placed the Statista infographic here for ready reference, however in the post on the Lake Ohio Weal site, I have also given the more extensive data from the CDC for the same year as well as some statistics from the National Safety Council
You will find more infographics at Statista
Suicide rates for men over age 55 are very high and go up dramatically with age. They are much higher than for women.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db483.htm
This seems to be part of a package that comes with losing a spouse, retiring, having few friends, becoming chronically sick, etc etc.
Saw this kind of frustration, anger, and depression hit my dad, father-in-law, uncle, and grandfather. Seeing it closer to home now. A dementia component exacerbates it.
Most Medicare plans have limited mental health coverage. I saw hospice care turn this around in a couple of cases, but many men don't get into hospice until they have just weeks left.
I knew falls are among the leading causes of death. I never imagined such a serious fall though until Sept 22, 2023. My husband managed to survive the fall, and later survived two serious infections, including one that caused sepsis and a 106.6 fever. Joe Lieberman, former Senator and a politician that I admired even while I was still a Republican, died last spring following a fall at his home. He was 82, the same age my husband was when he fell. Some ( maybe the women) may remember Laura Ashley, the English fabric designer whose work took off in both the home decorating and fashion fields. She died of a fall in her home in England. She was 60.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I try to game out what is likely to be my cause of death (I'm not in any hurry, just curious.) Taking my immediate ancestors (parents and two sets of grandparents), it works out to one death by cancer (mother), one Alzheimer's or related condition (paternal grandmother), and heart disease (everybody else). I would rather have heart issues than cancer or Alzheimer's, I suppose. Not that I will get any choice in the matter.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, that's a pretty interesting game. In my case, my parents are both still living. Both are cancer survivors, so I guess there is at least a moderately strong chance that cancer will get one or both of them, sooner or later. Among my grandparents, I'm a little foggy on cause of death. One died of lung cancer while in her 50s but she was a heavy smoker. The other three lived well into their 80s (which is where my parents are now). One of the remaining three grandparents died of a stroke, suffered while he was at daily mass. Another was diabetic and had a host of other physical and mental health issues but lived into her 80s; I'm not sure which was the direct cause of her death. The other was quite strong and healthy into his 80s, and then declined for a couple of years and died, but I'm a little unclear on what it was that eventually got him. I'll have to ask my mom.
DeleteI'm overweight, so it's possible that something related to obesity will get me sooner or later. My digestive-tract guy is keeping a close-ish eye on my colon these days.
If we had played this game in 2019, I don't think any of us would have guessed "pandemic of a deadly communicable disease". It's what Tom died of.
Delete75 percent of people with my type of cancer die of massive strokes or coronary thrombosis, 25 percent progress to aggressive leukemia after having the chronic cancer for 15-20 years. This is year 15 for me, so anything I get now is gravy.
DeleteJean, I guess you've had it nearly as long as I've known you. Sorry, I didn't realize until the last few years you are a cancer patient. Sorry if I missed something you had shared with us.
DeleteWhatever. Everybody's got their problems. Oral chemo has kept my blood levels stable for the last six years. I get tired and irritable pretty easy, but bad back, bad heart valve, and allergies are worse than the cancer at this point. Eventually the chemo will stop working and the disease will progress. Oncologist talked to me about a stem cell transplant, but given my heart problems, I'm not a good candidate for that. Plus we don't have that kind of money. I've had my threescore and ten years, my affairs are in order, and my main concern is not to be a burden to Raber and The Boy. So far so good.
DeleteParish priests, and deacons who are retired, do a lot of funerals - several every single week. But a couple of categories really get to them. One is the death of a child, teen or young adult, especially a young parent. The other is a suicide. I think a suicide victim leaves in his/her wake the feeling of failure on the part of many loved ones left behind.
ReplyDeleteAnother tough category is someone who died of a violent crime, such as someone attacked in a home break-in. That's happened a couple of times here.
DeleteI remember when my husband was a fairly new deacon he baptized a baby who died a couple of months later of SIDs. That was pretty hard. There are people who think that unless the parents are actively practicing Catholics that they shouldn't baptize a baby. But how would they feel if the child died without Baptism? One of my brothers died a day after his birth and hadn't been baptized yet. The priest assured my parents that the baby was in the hands of God, but I think it always bothered them.
My mother died of a brain aneurysm. at 81. I don’t know what my father died from or my grandparents. I think one had a heart attack. My brother died at 47 after a freak accident - a golf ball hit him on the head and he kept playing. He died in his sleep of a brain bleed. My sister died a few days after her 81st birthday in November - heart attack. Her daughter “ preceded her in death” - my niece and her husband who were shot to death by their daughter’s boyfriend. I’m sure the stress from her daughters murder and the continuously postponed trials didn’t help my sisters heart issues. I had an uncle die in his early 40 s of leukemia. He was my mother’s brother. His only child, a daughter, the only cousin I actually know and am at least somewhat close to, lost her son to leukemia about 3 years ago.He was 39 and died in the same hospital in LA that his grandfather died in of the same cancer. It is called The City of Hope. Ironic, but it’s actually a fairly successful cancer hospital. I’m going to die of stress related something after the last twelve months and the non- stop continuing anxiety, stress and depression. I am now 77 and was on track for 90 until this year. I still have older two siblings - my brother who has serious heart issues but who will be 84 in December. He's also a cancer survivor. @0Aggresdive Prostate cancer that returned after radical surgery, but the second round of treatments - radiation - did the trick. He was diagnosed when he was 64. My eldest sister is 86. We are not close and seldom communicate but I know she has a lot of issues that she doesn’t talk about. She had breast cancer. So did my other sister. Since all three of us had breast cancer we were tested for a genetic cause but none of us carry a breast cancer gene. Lots of cancer in my husbands family - lots and lots of his parents generation and his own - cousins, two sibs etc. no sign of any cancer for him. He will be 84 in November , has had heart issues for five years ( probably why he fell - heart missed a beat), now has a pacemaker,. His risk is heart and infection from a urinary tract infection - it’s a leading cause of death in paralyzed people because they don’t feel early symptoms. He’s almost died from UTIs twice this year. That’s what finally got Christopher Reeves.
DeleteSo much happy talk. We’re updating our estate plan, medical directives etc soon.
Katherine, our firstborn son was baptized in the hospital Newborn ICU when he was a few days old. He had pneumonia and was handling it well but a Jesuit from LMU - a family friend - was in town at a meeting at Georgetown and he insisted on baptizing our son in the hospital even though the docs said there was no immediate danger. That son is now a NONE and his wife is too but they just enrolled their two not baptized kids in a Catholic school.
DeleteI could live 20 years or something could happen tomorrow. Taking nothing for granted. I have a will. My present priority isv to get the family memorabilia to people with heirs, hoping they give a rat’s. Everything is on hard disk, cd, flash drive and the cloud. It all landed in my lap, of course, one of the family’s evolutionary dead ends.
ReplyDeleteIt may remind them that they are, at least partly, the offspring of immigrants who came from troubled places. Also, that they came from working class people. I’ll try to tell the stories.
There was a woman in my maternal grandmother's family Glasser who collected all the information for that large family, about a dozen siblings (two marriages) and sent it to all of us with encouragement to help her update it. She did not do much of a job of tracking the family back to Germany. I knew about the Glasser's who were in Western Pa, but not much about those in Eastern Pa. The great grandparents were from Carrollton which I know a lot of about because my mother visited there regularly as a child. Since my father died, I have lost track of the grandchild and great grandchildren on that side of the family.
DeleteMy maternal grandfather was from the British Isles. His family was Protestant, so we didn't really associate with them very much especially since they separated from my grandmother.
Around the time of Roots, I became interested in my Polish Ancestry. In the large Indiana University library there were three books by Rakowski's, all in statistics and social sciences. I also was contacted by a Rakowski in New England. That family had a member who was a co-developer of the Universal Product Code, and well as some artistic members. I never knew much about my paternal grandmother who came from Lithuania.
So it is really difficult to keep track of recent family trees in the United States let alone try to trace things back to England, Germany, Lithuania, and Poland. By the time things got to me I knew that I was born Catholic; ethnic stuff was never an important part of my life just a curiosity from my grand parents.
Around that time Mieczysław Rakowski was the last (liberal) Communist Prime Minister of Poland. The surname Rakowski is a Polish habitational name that originated from several places called Rakowo and Raków. including one south of Warsaw and another in Belarus which was a frontier town between Poland and the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1939.
Ha, I am very partial to my family's "evolutionary dead ends." They were the ones who knew where all the skeletons were buried and often had the most wide-ranging interests. I have the diary of my grandmother's beloved Aunt Sarah, who lived to be 97 and bought me my very first book, "The Cat in the Hat." She died when I was about 5. In one of her last entries, she copied info about how nuclear fission in the H-bomb worked from the Readers Digest. The entry read, "For Wed club meeting. My God!" Wish I'd been a fly on the wall at her club that day.
DeleteJack, among my cousins on my mother’s side, I’m the only one with all four grandparents from Poland. I always felt a strong connection.. After my visit to Poland in December, I felt I would be happy living there were it not for all my friends and relatives being here. My name means “digger”, one who clears land. Sometimes I have to tell people it’s not a shortened name. Not all Polish names end in “ski” which is adjectival and therefore changes to “ska” for female gender. A town near my maternal grandparent’s origin is called Radziłów which is supposed to be the ancestral lands of the Polish nobleman who married Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill. For hundreds of years, Poland and Lithuania were joined together in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth so your Baltic grandmother was pretty much in the club.
ReplyDeleteJean, any great aunt interested in nuclear fission and hydrogen bombs sounds like a lot of fun.