Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

And how's the recovery from the recession going?


Subway poster at Central by TheOvernight.org, a human services non-profit:


"A suicide is attempted every minute of every day." One assumes they're referring to the U.S.
I'm no mathematician, but my calculator tells me that comes to some 500,000 per annum. To think of all the movies those people are missing. But that's an unfeeling thing to say. I take that back.


The scary thing about this figure is that one knows it is tip of an iceberg. If 500,000 actually go through with an attempt, five or ten or more times that number are thinking about it. And scientific studies have shown that modern healthcare, whether covered by private insurers or public revenues, is ineffective in treating people who have killed themselves.


Land of opportunity.


An article in the Boston Globe of March 15, 2010 reports that according to Harvard associate professor of psychology Matthew K. Nock, more people die each year by suicide than by homicide or war. "We're all more likely to die by our own hand than we are by somebody else's" says Nock.


Well, there's always the movies to take our minds off things. But cf. M. LeClerc:


"The more we love movie stars, the more they don't love us back."