Death and Joblessness

http://washingtonindependent.com/94925/death-and-joblessness?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter

By Annie Lowrey 8/17/10 4:30 AM

He hit “publish” on the last Wednesday in July, in the middle of a long afternoon. “I also have become homeless and am on the verge of suicide. I slept out in the wood last night and didn’t gett very much sleep. I hate to bring you people down with my problems but I thought you would like to know this. I don’t know what else to say except I’m very sorry it turned out like this but I can take the strain of living like this very much longer.” (All posts are reproduced as published.)

The post went up as part of a conversation about homelessness on Unemployed-Friends, a popular online forum for the unemployed to connect with one another. Most were discussing how to live in homeless shelters after eviction or foreclosure. But his post went further. “This is killing me physically and emotoinally. I am at the end of my rope and getting to the point of letting go. I have tried everything I know to get help. DHS won’t help’ Salvation Army won’t help. 211 won’t help. I have no idea as to where to go from here. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow I probably will be dead.”

Thousands of users visit the web site daily, offering one another everything from advice about applying for unemployment insurance benefits to emotional support. It is one of dozens of such sites helping the nation’s 14.6 million unemployed — particularly the long-term unemployed, the 6.6 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months. “I am very tempted to walk in front of an oncoming semi right now. Sorry to go on ranting but I am getting to the point where I feel I have no choice. For those of you that want to know I am currently in Grand Rapids. I appreciate your words of encouragement but right now it doesn’t seem to be enough to keep me going.”

The post ended, “I will try to tough out another night. Goodbye for now.”

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The unemployed commit suicide at a rate two or three times the national average, researchers estimate. And in many cases, the longer the spell of unemployment, the higher the likelihood of suicide.



On online fora such as Unemployed-Friends, the topic comes up often, users finding news reports or hearing tell of deaths in their community, and mourning them. There was the Staten Island suicide, where an emergency medical services employee who thought himself about to be fired posted his final words on Facebook: “I can’t go on anymore. I just hung myself.” In Anaheim, Calif., there was the man underwater on his mortgage and awash in credit card debt who shot his wife and and one of his children before himself. His two children survived. His wife did not. In Indiana, there was the middle-aged mother who sent her daughter out to buy soda and killed herself before her daughter came back. That happened the day after the repossession of her Chevy Malibu.

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There is no saying how many suicides the recession has caused.

During the Great Depression, the suicide rate increased about 20 percent, from 14 to 17 per 100,000 people. The Asian economic crisis in 1997 led to an estimated 10,400 additional suicides in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, with suicides spiking more than 40 percent among some demographic groups. But such statistics can mislead, social scientists say. Joblessness does not cause suicide. Rather, it correlates: Depressed persons tend to lose their jobs due to poor work performance, and a few also commit suicide. Jobless people tend to turn to alcohol, worsening their depression, and increasing the chances that they harm themselves. Still, academic studies show that suicide rates tend to move with the unemployment rate. Researchers in New Zealand found that the unemployed were up to three times as likely to commit suicide, with middle-aged men the most likely.

So how many suicides are associated with the recession? Nobody knows, not yet. The statistics lag about three years, so the official Center for Disease Control numbers still predate the financial crisis. Right now, therefore, the reports remain anecdotal.

But looking at individual counties’ or cities’ data, there are ominous signs of a real spike. Some counties show no change. Others show dramatic climbs. In rural Elkhart County, Ind., where the unemployment rate is 13.7 percent, there were nearly 40 percent more suicides in 2009 than in a normal year. In Macomb County, Mich., where the unemployment rate is also 13.7 percent, an average of 81 people per year committed suicide between 1979 and 2006. That climbed to 104 in 2008 and to more than 180 in 2009.

The suicide prevention hotlines also show signs of stress. In Jan. 2007, as the recession started, there were 13,423 calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a nationwide toll-free hotline. A year later, there were 39,467. In Aug. 2009, the call volume peaked at 57,625. Last year, the government granted the group an extra $1 million to increase programs in places with high unemployment rates.

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Economists Richard Dunn of Texas A&M University and Timothy Classen of Loyola University Chicago are conducting some of those studies. They wanted to pinpoint the effect joblessness had on suicide rates. The problem was sorting out correlation and causation, as many people lose their jobs for depression or alcoholism or drug abuse, which in turn increase the risk of suicide. The economists, of course, could not fire people at random and then track them. So they looked for natural experiments, where workers were fired for reasons other than job performance. They zeroed in on mass layoffs, like when a factory closes and thousands of workers find themselves suddenly unemployed.

Unemployment, they found, does increase the risk of suicide. And not just once, but twice: First, just after the factory shuts down, and then again, about six months later, when unemployment insurance ends. The impact is strongest among men. Dunn explains: “If you had laid off 4,000 [men] initially, one would have killed himself immediately, within a month, and six months later, another person would have killed himself.”

“We don’t expect all 4,000 people to remain unemployed in month six,” Dunn continues. “It is probably 2,000 or 1,000 people who are. So the research suggests that the impact of losing your unemployment benefits is actually stronger than the impact of losing your job. How much stronger? We don’t know. But twice as strong, three times as strong. Some significant difference.”

That is to say, duration of unemployment and loss of unemployment benefits are more important determinants of suicide risk than job loss itself.

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