Leading cause of death in Australia

[stui magpie]

What do you reckon is the leading cause of death in Australia?

Coronary heart disease?

Dementia and Alzheimer's?

You'd be on the money if you picked either, but they don't tend to kick in until people get older.

What do you reckon is the leading cause of death for 15-44 year olds?





Suicide.

http://www.aihw.gov.au/deaths/leading-causes-of-death/

Suicide, land transport accidents and accidental poisoning (which includes drug overdoses) are the leading causes of death for 15-45 year olds.

In 2012, there were 2,329 premature deaths due to suicide in Australia. Three-quarters (75%) of these deaths from suicide were males

Fact sheets here http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129552722

[What'sinaname]

sounds about right, young people won't have physiological heath related illness but more likely to have psychological illness

[Skids]

Such a waste of life.
What leads somebody down the path of wanting to take their life?

For me, it was my 1st marriage break up.... lucky I never been good at knots.

No story, no excuse.... it's that moment. The best things are friends.

[watt price tully]

Bloody awful & barely any money in services / communities / prevention. If 20% of the population experience mental health issues then one would expect a commensurate amount to be directed to not just medical model services but to community based services.

The incidence of young women suiciding is growing at an alarming rate. Young men, rural men, liquorish all sorts.

The issue has been discussed on 774 am radio on Jon Faine in the mornings over the last two days.

[Jezza]

Not enough awareness has been raised about suicide being the leading cause of death for people aged between 15 to 45 in the mainstream media.

More funding in mental health is essential if this epidemic is to be addressed.

[David]

I sometimes wonder if the media taboo on reporting suicides is helping or not. I understand why it exists (the theory that getting in the news might be a motivation for some people to kill themselves, or that reading about it might trigger others), but it also contributes to a culture of silence and shame regarding the topic.

Either way, we really need to get better at making services accessible to people and finding ways to intervene at an early stage. The current model (getting a referral from a GP and then getting six free sessions with a psychologist with the option of an additional four in a calendar year) could be improved greatly. A lot of it comes down to resources and how much governments are willing or able to allocate.

But even then, talking to a psychologist is no magic bullet. I don't know what is needed, precisely, but there needs to be a more holistic model for dealing with mental health, beyond just medication and CBT. Helping build better friendship/support networks would probably benefit a lot of people at risk.

[Mugwump]

It is, of course a terrible and tragic thing. I do not know if it is getting worse per capita, but I think we'd all agree that one death is one too many.

And now let me do the bit that sounds heartless but is not. Nearly all of the posts above immediately leap to the idea that government should make more money available. This is our way of processing everything. It is like a mental tic. Consider nothing deeply and apply more government funding. I take a different view. I suggest that we would do well to reconsider the effects of family and social breakdown, and think about rebuilding the society that we started to break in the sixties with hedonism and drugs and naive humanism, and continued to wreck with neo-liberalism (an ideological extension of the foregoing) up to the present day. More social workers have been applied to this broken society for fifty years. And the problems of despair multiply. Keep licking the front of the stamp and when it will not stick, apply more saliva. Maybe we would be better to think outside our current naive, and increasingly tragic consensus.

[Culprit]

Middle-aged workers in secure jobs earning 85000 + a year finding themselves on the dole and having to take any casual work at $20 -$ 25 an hour less tax, no holiday pay. Where your experience, ability and education don't mean shit. This happened to me and speaking from experience, I seriously started to think if this what my life has come to? So I started to think it's time to get out of here and I was seriously contemplating how to do it. I was offered a few jobs which turned my life around. I can honestly say if those jobs didn't happen I would not be here. I didn't talk to anyone about my problems as my thoughts are no one really gives a shit.

I would suggest I am not alone in the current non-employment environment.

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

^

Complex no doubt, and I happily cede to your greater experience in dealing with this issue, but I also take Mugwumps point that simply throwing more money at a problem is never the solution.

One of the reasons I raised this is because I see other causes getting publicity and foundations and days etc, but this is a bigger issue.

We see the campaign against family violence using the number that 1 woman dies each week due to family violence.

Now not to diminish that cause or to suggest that family violence, violence against women and violence in particular aren't things that need to have a raised profile and work done to reduce it, but 6 people per day take their own lives.

That's 6 people per day.

I can relate to Culprit's story, I went through something a long time ago that resulted in one evening getting the shotgun, loading it, placing it on the coffee table in front of me and then I sat back and drank while I looked at it for I don't remember how long. After however long it was, I got up, unloaded it and put it away and I don't recall having a conscious thought during that whole time, I don't even recall what tipped me into not picking it up and using it. I just didn't.

Not everyone gives warning signs, not everyone has clinical depression, not everyone needs to be turned into a chemistry experiment and/or locked up for their own good. Some do.

More awareness would be a good start.

[David]

If it's not about funding, though, what is it? We can talk about cultural change � and I have no doubt that our culture of atomisation and loneliness is a big factor in this � but how do you even begin to change a culture? What does that actually involve?

I know the concept of 'throwing money at the problem' seems simplistic, but I tend to think less in terms of money than the services that could be funded by it. As someone who's seen a psychologist for mental health issues, I know that it's not a silver bullet (or necessarily even all that useful sometimes). But you have to start somewhere � and I feel like if we're not going to discuss how to improve or introduce government services, then we're back at square one.

[stui magpie]

You start from square 1. Problem definition, and there will be a number of them, not one.

From there you work your way up to solutions and then determine what funding is required to implement those solutions and what savings there are from scrapping current things that clearly don't work.

that way you not only work out how much money is required, but where it's needed and where it's not.

Increasing funding as a starting point is dumb and counter productive as it doesn't go where it's needed but to the noisiest interest groups.

[think positive]

Start in primary school, build kids up, set them up to succeed, then gradually make it harder, so they learn that hiccups in the road doesn't make you a failure. Reward effort, not disobedience, (until you have helped in a classroom of terrors, you won't get this one). Self esteem is the most valuable thing we can give to our children. And letting them know that your love and pride in them doesn't depend on only successes.

I'd also hazard a guess that the figures have increased significantly with the explosion of social media. Isolation, touched up selfies, and the weird way people seem to think it's ok to abuse, bully, belittle, other people, even friends and family, in a way that they would not dream of face to face. Loneliness, isolation, boredom depression. Get out there and mix with real people.

[Mugwump]

^ broadly agree with TP. David, you change a culture by making laws and enforcing them, educating schoolchildren and university students with the attitudes you want them to have, and applying resources to encouraging and preventing etc. We did it with smoking and drink driving and racial prejudice. It could be done in other areas if we had the will.

[David]