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[muldrake]

That's a silly argument. You're saying because it's a scatter gun and you can't really tell who's at risk you should fund the extra money to women more.

but since men account for 75% of the successes they are still a better investment even if you can't target at-risk people. If you only target women at random you'd have to spend 4 times as much to intervene in the same number of "successful" suicide attempts.

If you can target at-risk people the odds are ~12 to 1 in favor of preventing male attempts (as per my last post), and in the completely blind scenario it's still 3 to 1 in favor of men.

You're also assuming that intervention would be successful on a similar allocation of resources.  Suppose it is simply that women attempting suicide are more likely to be doing it as a cry for help, while men attempting suicide are doing it because they actually intend to get dead.  Stopping people from doing something they're determined to do, especially when they also choose methods more likely to succeed, is not going to be as easy.

[palsch]

I'd argue that the lower level of successful suicides means than men actually need more prevention efforts. The success rate for women is really low, maybe 10-20% of attempts. So if you could fund the same money to stop X number of male attempts vs X number of female attempts, then you should fund the reduction of male attempts, because that will be money better spent as it saves more lives.

It doesn't quite work that way. Someone surviving a suicide attempt is one of the most common ways to enter the support system. That men often die during their first suicidal crisis means that they rarely enter the support system at all. Crisis lines only go so far. You can't help someone if the first time they reach a breaking point they die.

The question of getting people into the system before they reach a crisis point is extremely hard and working against a lot of masculine socialisation. There is a huge Samaritans campaign here in the UK. The basics boil down to the support structures existing - it isn't like they were exclusively designed for women or are deliberately excluding men - but men are much less likely to use them than women. So to help men we need additional measures to help them approach and use the existing support, as well as focusing on areas where additional social support structures or structural changes can be made.

I'd also say that focusing solely on suicide is short-sighted. Depression and related mental illness can be crippling even if they don't lead to suicide. Support structures shouldn't have the sole goal of keeping people alive, but generally improving quality of life. A laser focus on suicidal crises is set up to fail.

[Grim Portent]

That's a silly argument. You're saying because it's a scatter gun and you can't really tell who's at risk you should fund the extra money to women more.

but since men have 4 times the successes they are still a better investment even if you can't target at-risk people.

I'm actually saying women are the safer investment for targeted funding because it's easier to get a successful hit on a suicidal person that way, even if that person was not going to die from their suicidal efforts. Any expenditure that goes to a non-suicidal person is essentially wasted resources in the short term, and there are costs, social, financial and physical involved in attempted suicide even when it doesn't result in death, so preventing an attempt that wouldn't have been fatal is still a gain, while spending effort on someone who was not at risk provides little to no gain.

The thing is if there's more widespread harm caused by the non-lethal effects of 3 attempted suicides than by 1 successful one, to simplify the ratios, which is actually quite possible considering the effects suicide attempts can have on those around a person, then women are the better option, if the 1 death is more detrimental to society than the 3 attempts then men are the better option to target.

Granted even in the scenario that the cumulative disruption of 3 attempted suicides outweighs that of one successful one you still have dead people from the successes, which is tragic and lamentable, but the value of societal wellbeing vs individual wellbeing is probably a bit beyond discussion here.

EDIT: To phrase the above the clearly, there are secondary effects to suicide, successful and attempted, in addition to the simple death or survival of the suicidal person themselves. What's actually more efficient an expenditure of money depends on how damaging you consider these effects compared to the death itself and how severe they are in the smaller number of successful suicides compared to the larger number of failed suicides./EDIT



In regards to palsch's post above, my brother and I both struggle with clinical depression and suicidal thoughts, him more than me, and have done so since our mid-teens. Neither of us have sought professional help beyond medication prescribed by our GP, and I would primarily attribute it to the general idea that we're supposed to be stoic and in control of our emotions. His response to depressive moods and suicidal thoughts is to shuffle into a dark room and spend a while avoiding people until he's suppressed things again, mine is to get angry at myself and things around me until I've quashed them for a time.

There's no good reason we don't get proper help. There's plenty of support available, it's even entirely covered by the NHS here and supposed to be very effective according to some of our friends who've needed counselling and therapy for the same reasons over the years. We're just culturally conditioned not to seek help. Personally I blame it on stoic manly man media from when we were kids, the whole only babies and girls cry thing and the general idea that men don't talk about their feelings, hard to shake that crap off.

[chaoticag]

Hope you two can get the support the both of you need. And I do mean like, need. Depression can be a hell of a killer sometimes. I do think that it would likely help you both if you can land some therapy sessions, and if you could get some, maybe your brother will also consider it. It can be a tough first step to take emotionally, and asking for help feels wrong sometimes, but I think you can take that help and should it help you turn it around and help others, passing the good deed down. Hopefully anyway. No real sure things when it comes to depression.

[Max™]

Yeah, fuck the stoic crap when you need help, faking strength is worse than any imagined admission of weakness if it keeps you from getting help. It's one of the things I actually admire about 4chan, they're a bunch of shitbag morons memeing bags of stupid at each other, but beyond the initial posts of "do a flip!" you tend to get actual advice and helpful concern too. My dad was a coward and went out like one--cars are also a fairly common male suicide method btw--it was helpful because I don't have to deal with what would happen after I ended him, but ultimately it was just one final fuck you since he got off easy.

There's nothing manly about holding shit in until you can't see anything else besides death as a solution, that's hollywood cowboy bullshit, talk things over with people online until you're comfortable enough to talk to someone face to face if need be, but keep on talking.

Speaking of depressed macho dudes though: http://www.stonekettle.com/2017/02/petulance.html

Two paragraphs in and the petulant whining starts. Hell even George W. Bush had a thicker skin (and was a more stirring and focused speaker and you have no idea how much it hurts me to type that).

I feel ya, man, the fuck kinda world are we in where we're now looking back fondly at Mr. "I believe, women, and fish, should be able to... express their love for one another" Bush?

[Grim Portent]

Hope you two can get the support the both of you need. And I do mean like, need. Depression can be a hell of a killer sometimes. I do think that it would likely help you both if you can land some therapy sessions, and if you could get some, maybe your brother will also consider it. It can be a tough first step to take emotionally, and asking for help feels wrong sometimes, but I think you can take that help and should it help you turn it around and help others, passing the good deed down. Hopefully anyway. No real sure things when it comes to depression.

Spoiler: personal sidenote (click to show/hide)

Thanks.

I'm basically over my depression, at least for the time being. A few years on medication and some time working in a relaxed small store environment, little family owned pet shop to be precise, did wonders for it once I was out of the situation that brought it on in the first place. Not even been on my medication for about two months now and other than sleeping badly I've had no problems so far.

My brother has been less lucky in regards to dealing with it, dead end job, biomed qualification that he can't get work with due to lack of available jobs in the field, but he also seems to be managing it after changing medication a while back. The odd major downward moodswing, but having seen what he was like when it was bad I'd say he's pretty much fine now as long as he remembers his pills.

I'm personally more concerned about an old gaming club friend of ours who has a much more problematic background. He goes to therapy but doesn't take medication because he doesn't like the idea, so whenever he can't get therapy sessions for a while he crashes really hard. We've recommended he speak to his GP about medication since it helped both of us, but I don't think he's listened.

With regards to wider treatment of psychological ill health I actually think the biggest obstacle is the lack of therapists and counselors, followed by the cultural stigma against seeking help for mental problems. The latter is hard to do much about, but the former is really just a matter of training people up and providing funding for treatment, and healthcare spending is usually a net gain on investment in the long run.

Obviously the US without socialized healthcare has no easy method to try and address the problem without sweeping reforms or costly initiatives to subsidise education and care from private practitioners, which is a very costly method, but elsewhere I think it could be countered by trying to train up enough psychiatric equivalents to GPs that it's not difficult to get an appointment with one under the existing forms of state supported healthcare. Here in the UK they're a type of NHS specialist that GPs can refer you to, which seems to me to be the wrong approach if only because the level of separation between public access to mental healthcare makes things more difficult for patients from my observations.

I'm probably going to drop this conversation after this point, because by now we're only barely related to US politics because we've been on the tangent train for a while.



Anyone got any Trump news?

[birdy51]

After demanding a friendly reporter, Trump dodged a question on anti-Semitism that from what I can tell wouldn't have been hard to just say 'yes, we'll crack down on anti-Semitism the same way we crack down on anything else.'

Then he proceeds to rant about himself and how not racist and xenophobic he is.

But I really don't consider that news so much as demonstrated stupidity being repeated over a long period of time...

[smjjames]

I'm probably going to drop this conversation after this point, because by now we're only barely related to US politics because we've been on the tangent train for a while.

Well, it's tangentially related to politics because healthcare.

Anyone got any Trump news?

Nothing new this morning, unless you count him hitting the golf course this morning before doing NSA interviews.

[Reelya]

I'm probably going to drop this conversation after this point, because by now we're only barely related to US politics because we've been on the tangent train for a while.

Well, it's tangentially related to politics because healthcare.

It was hard to tell whether it was related to healthcare or feminism actually. The argument was that we shouldn't talk about men's health issues because those are going to be "fixed" so there's no point discussing them now. Which sounds awfully like "feminism will fix your issues" actually rather than just healthcare, because if it was just about healthcare then that logic "don't bring it up because it will be fixed" would apply to both genders. Anyway it's a much more common argument that men's issues shouldn't be discussed because feminism will fix them too. Which is the specific POV I objected to. Then people brought up "general health care funding" only later, so that really felt like a complete goalpost shift to another conversation entirely.

But also, I think the argument about "leave it to general healthcare funding" is questionable in any issue that has a bias in either direction. e.g. if women disproportionately suffer from a specific condition, then we shouldn't just rely on general funding increases because the discrimination isn't going to be solved by that. You need to disproportionately spend money on the group who has the worst outcomes.

And as we've seen here, even though men suffer far more disproportionate number of suicides, everyone is twisting that around to saying we should spend more resources to tackle the female side of that problem, because "attempts" are worse than actual deaths. And that attitude seems awfully like twisting things around so that funding doesn't go to male victims down the track ... which kind of proves the point I was making. I don't think the families involved would agree with the idea that 3 attempts is worse than an actual death. But the problem with pumping yet more money into the female side of this is that more at-risk females are already entering the system and they do have better outcomes already. It's the men who are plodding along isolated and not seeking or gaining help. So it's those ones we can help the most. Just picking young guys at random for spot-checks on their mental health would reveal more actual suicidal types than women - and the women enter the system already through smaller incidents. They don't need extra assistance to enter the system, men do.

You can't just say "well if they don't seek help too bad" because equity doesn't work like that. That's victim blaming. It's literally the same as saying "well women don't deserve to be board members because they don't seek promotions". No ... society is meant to be proactive in both these types of cases. We don't blame women for not being ambitious enough and we don't blame men for not seeking help ... you're meant to put out a helping hand here.

[smjjames]

It was on feminism and then bounced back and forth between feminism and healthcare/gun control, yeah.

Grim Portent does make a point about culture and stigmatization though, but that affects both all genders. But a discussion on culture and stigmatization would probably go in another thread. Not sure what thread though since the last time we had a feminism thread, it died in a fire.

[palsch]

Sadly Harward dropped out of his appearance on ABC just before filming. I was hoping for something juicy from him.

Lots of chatter around this article about Mattis. Especially;

“Welcome to democracy,” Mattis said. “It’s at times wildly contentious. It’s at times quite sporting. But the bottom line is this is the best form of government that we can come up with. So, the military’s job is to hold the line, and to hold the line, and to hold the line while our government sorts out the way ahead and our people speak. We don’t have any disarray inside the military, and that’s where my responsibility resides.”

As has been pointed out, this isn't quite true.


US chaos is making Syrian peace talks harder according to the UN envoy.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura told the Munich Security Conference the lack of a clear U.S. position made resolving the complex issues of the six-year civil war far more complicated than his earlier mediation efforts for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I can't tell you (if it will succeed), but we have to push with the momentum. Even a ceasefire cannot hold too long if there is no political (solution)," he said, referring to the shaky ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana.

Questions abound over Washington's approach to ending the war, even after the first international foray by members of U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign policy team. It remains unclear if Trump will make good his promise to build closer ties to Russia, especially in the fight against Islamic State.

"One thing I’m missing at the moment ... is a clear U.S. strategy,” de Mistura told delegates. "Where are the United States (on a political solution)? I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.”

A brief profile on Tillerson's leadership style.

[Starver]

Nothing new this morning, unless you count him hitting the golf course this morning before doing NSA interviews.

“I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off. … You don’t have time to take time off.” - guess who!

[smjjames]

Mattis's context is this though:

But Mattis also acknowledged the chaotic nature of Trump’s administration so far.

Seems to be more a comparison with the current chaos to the ordered system that the military has.

On Syria, and someone may have mentioned it already, I read that he had pulled out the US negotiators from the peace talks in Kazakhistan. It may have been that he was pulling out what he sees as Obama's negotiators and replacing with ones appointed by him. The article really shows that Trump needs to hurry the heck up in formulating foriegn policy.

Maybe I'm just used to the likes of Madeline Albright to John Kerry, but Tillerson seems to be doing it wrong. Then again, Tillerson is pretty unique in his experience and is still finding his way. Only problem though is that, like Mattis, his job depends on a competent Commander in Chief and a functioning policy apparatus.

Nothing new this morning, unless you count him hitting the golf course this morning before doing NSA interviews.

“I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off. … You don’t have time to take time off.” - guess who!

He considers it a 'working vacation', and I suppose hitting the links is a way for him to clear his mind or something.

[Reelya]

How long until America's first gay president?

[Grim Portent]

How long until America's first gay president?

Unless every state but California gets nuked probably quite a while. 

EDIT: Decided to check which state was the first one to legalize gay marriage, was somewhat surprised it was Massachusetts, more because I often forget the state even exists than anything else. Beat the others to it by 5 years between it and the 2nd one to do so though, so hats off to Massachusetts for that.