What are the figures when proportionately adjusted?

Having thoroughly damaged family life through its interference, it now wants men to pick up the bill.

I read this and just wonder how these people sleep at night, but presumably they are so lacking in moral integrity that thay actually think they are doing something worthy.

I’d like to take a moment to mention that although your statistics are useful, I worry that some of the figures might be slightly misleading as presented. For instance, you said that 91% of people who commit suicide are “white, and usually well-educated and from middle-class backgrounds.” That may very well be, but does this fact alone imply that people of this background are at higher risk of committing suicide than others? For example, consider a town whose population can be classified into two mutually exclusive types: type A (91% of the population) and type B (9% of the population). Now suppose that everybody in the town is equally likely to commit suicide, regardless of whether they are type A or type B. It follows naturally that, on the average, 91% of the people who commit suicide will be of type A — even though in actuality everybody is equally likely to commit suicide! Moreover, even if we supposed that EVERY person of type B will commit suicide, people of type B will still make up only a minority of the people who commit suicide as long as at least, say, 10% of people of type A commit suicide (because 10% of 91% is 9.1%, which represents a larger part of the population than the 9% of the population who belong to type B). Of course, one can also imagine a population distribution in which the fact that 91% of people who commit suicide are of type A really does correlate with the fact that people of type A are at higher risk for committing suicide (e.g., if people of type A made up 50% of the population and people of type B the other 50%), and this may very well be the case in the United States; but since about 75% of the population of the United States is white, I don’t think it’s an obvious conclusion to draw that people who are “white, and usually well-educated and from middle-class backgrounds” are at higher risk for suicide simply because they make up 91% of all suicides. The example I just gave should be enough to convince anyone that, at the very least, a little more thought is necessary before drawing that conclusion.

Still, I appreciate the work of people like you. More people should know about suicide and self-harm, and in particular I think it’s important for people to learn that in both cases, the goal should not simply be to reduce the number of occurrences. I understand why people generally prefer not to see others commit suicide or harm themselves, but (and especially in cases of self harm) it’s essential to make the mental health of the “victim” top priority — the goal of reducing the number of people who commit suicide or practice self-harm should be secondary to ensuring that these people lead a good mental life. That’s the most important thing.

Onward – JimBWarrior