We're Not Fixing The Suicide Problem

Suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes,
And I can take or leave it if I please...

Such is the refrain from the Johnny Mandel/Mike Altman song best known as the theme used by M*A*S*H. It appears that our response to suicide prevention has proven woefully ineffective since the song was first released in 1970.

Brendan Koerner, in his Atlantic essay The Suicide Conundrum, notes thusly:

Despite all we've learned about human psychology over the past several decades, we seem unable to make much of a dent in America's overall suicide rate, which has remained remarkably stable over the past half-century. In fact, the rate of suicide attempts seems to have gone up over that time period; the rate of successful attempts has most likely held steady due to advances in emergency-room medicine.

Think about that for a moment. While there has been a plodding removal of stigmata associated with mental health issues in general, we still we have more suicide attempts, the success rate tempered only by advances in medical care and advanced life support. That's failure, plain and simple.

Says Koerner:

And so the mystery remains: How do we reduce America's suicide rate, which has barely budged for 50 years? The natural answer is to address the underlying causes, such as desperate economic circumstances and poor mental health. But if we were intent on launching a 10-year crusade to reduce the national suicide rate by, say, 30 percent, what sorts of (relatively) quick, affordable fixes could we marshal? Will bridge barrier and signs work, for example, despite some recent evidence to the contrary?

That's an excellent question, and the fact that we're still asking it calls into question current approaches to prevention. The socio-economic causes of suicide are well known, yet they never enter into the debate when pompous windbags pontificate about deficit reduction on the backs on our neediest citizens while preserving the ability of those who have the most to accumulate even more.

How many poor citizens who attempt suicide but are saved by dedicated emergency room staff have private insurance? My guess is that not many. Medicaid is paying the tab, or hospitals are absorbing the expenses, both of which have been identified as part of the overall health care problem in this country. 

Experts agree that preventative medicine can lower overall medical costs, as issues are identified early and treatment can cure or effectively manage conditions before they become more significant in severity and require more invasive - and more expensive - treatment options.

Yet there seems to be little support for channeling a portion of available resources toward correcting the root causes of hopelessness and despair, or providing avenues for the desperate to cope with the crushing circumstances that have lead them to individual tipping points.

Have we become a society so cold-hearted that it's now acceptable to turn our backs on the suffering of others so that a small percentage of people who have accumulated the largest share of our combined wealth can continue to amass huge fortunes and increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots? Or is the system so stacked against anyone not part of that protected class that hopelessness is the new reality, and Americans are witnessing the beginning of a downward spiral that will only accelerate as we cowardly accede to a mental health caste system where those deemed worth saving are the very same people who are responsible for making the life and death decisions?

If so, it's time to start pumping Paxil into the water supply, because that sounds like a very unhappy existence.

Getting High With iDosing?

Kids today, with their newfangled ways to disassociate from the reality that it's really hard to be a kid today, have turned to audio in their latest attempt to make their parents, teachers, and law enforcement say really stupid things on television.



Now, I'm on the Board of Directors of a well-known substance abuse prevention organization, so I look at news reports like this much in the way a dog might tilt his head sideways when hearing a sound that doesn't jibe with what he knows to be true.

Music and sounds have been used as emotional gateways forever. This is hardly a new realization. Anyone remember when rock and roll was going to lead to heroin addiction and pregnant Daddy's girls?

We have kids experimenting with choking each other in order to feel the rush associated with oxygen deprivation. Misuse of common household chemicals is on the rise. Herbalism has found a new audience.

So let's fan the flames of fear about iDosing instead of having a serious conversation about what all of these activities have in common: Learning to deal with life can be very difficult and troubling and will undoubtedly cause some feelings that can be uncomfortable and foreign. And that's where we're failing, on several levels.

Most adults struggle to "feel and deal" with their own lives because they lack coping mechanisms or prefer the shortcut of a pill or blinders. And these are the folks tasked with teaching our children that the world can be a big, scary place, and that it's enormously difficult to sit in your own skin while you do the best that you can.

If you want to take away hedonism and escapism, you'd better get started, because there are entire industries based on these two qualities. It might be better to spend some time helping our kids understand what it's like to feel things and assist them in developing skills they can put into practice for the rest of their lives.

But that doesn't making a shocking local news clip, does it?

Evolutionary Psychology Bingo

Click the image for a larger view.

Comrade PhysioProf

Piano Stairs in Stockholm

This is certainly one way to get people to use the stairs instead of the escalator. Interesting experiment in a subway station in Stockholm.



It's amazing what people will do if it has a little fun associated with it. Think it would work in the United States?

Why Conspiracy Theorists Believe

Whether it's a group of people who maintain that the government is hiding evidence of alien life somewhere within Area 51, or citizens that claim the Apollo moon landings were actually performed on a soundstage in North Hollywood, conspiracy theorists are known primarily for two things - having beliefs slightly outside the norm, and sticking steadfastly to those beliefs regardless of any contradictory evidence that's presented.

So why do conspiracy buffs think this way? Would you believe that it goes back to when you were a child, drawing pictures of the sun?

Scientific American delves into the concept of agenticity - the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents.

Actually, it's a combination of things - “patternicity,” which the author defines as the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise, and agenticity. Finding patterns became an important skills back in the early days of man, where knowing the the sky was growing dark and the wind was picking up meant a storm was on the way, so you could take cover. Or the rustle over in the tall grass might mean a lion was creeping up to have you for lunch, so it was in your best interest to avoid the grassy patch during times of rustling.

But we struggle with true and false patterns, and are not always able to tell the difference. One of the down sides of being human, I guess.

Studies in cognitive neuroscience have shown that we eagerly find patterns and impart agency to them. As noted in the article, kids often have the idea that the sun can think and follows them around, so they often add in smiley faces when they draw pictures of the sun.

The article further notes:

“Many highly educated and intelligent individuals experience a powerful sense that there are patterns, forces, energies and entities operating in the world,” Hood explains. “More important, such experiences are not substantiated by a body of reliable evidence, which is why they are supernatural and unscientific. The inclination or sense that they may be real is our supersense.”

So don't think these folks are wacky or from another planet. They just like smiles on their suns.

Why People Believe Intelligent Agents Control The World , via Scientific American

Can Behavioral Economics Save Us?

NPR had a fascinating segment today on All Things Considered concerning the use of psychology to save your from yourself (generally) and applying this approach to economics (specifically) in a manner that makes a lot of sense.

It should come as no surprise that we humans don't do a very good job at analysis and decision making due to all sorts of biases and brain farts. Even when faced with evidence that our decisions are terrible, we'll continue to support our own conclusions.

For example, we tend to seek out data that supports our views while avoiding information that challenges them. That's confirmation bias and it clouds our ability to think clearly and rationally. Think of it this way - how many people watch both FOX News and MSNBC?

Anyway, a growing number of people working in the Obama administration are believers of psychological research as a basis for economic thought, or as NPR points out:

"...the human animal is hard-wired to make errors when it comes to decision-making, and therefore people need a little "nudge" to make decisions that are in their own best interests."

The NPR story delves into the genesis of behavioral economics and it's no surprise that economists are clucking while dismissing the whole thing as mumbo-jumbo. Conservatives use the topic to point out yet another way for government to insert itself into personal choice and liberty.

I think I'm on the side of behavioral economics on this one, folks. The examples make sense to me, and there have been numerous failings of previously-sacred economic models of late.

Even if fancy computers parse the data and crunch the numbers, people design the codes and algorithms that make up the models. Human psychology has to play a role.

Some of the concepts put forth in the NPR story are familiar to me, as I'm in the middle of reading The Science of Fear, by Daniel Gardner. "Anchoring bias" is one of them:

For instance, Kahneman and Tversky identified "anchoring bias." It turns out that whenever you are exposed to a number, you are influenced by that number whether you intend to be influenced or not.

Credit card companies count on this bias when they suggest a very low minimum payment on your bill. We tend to make a decision on how much to pay based on using that very figure as a point of reference.

Humans are nothing if not erratic and irrational, and we seem to be able to accept that in nearly every facet of our lives. Why not economics?

For those who worry that "nudges" are another word for expansion of government reach, consider this passage:

But Thaler argues that government policymakers don't need to be hyper-rational to help people make better choices.

He offers this example: Any American who goes to London realizes that they are endangering their lives every time they try to cross the street, because the traffic comes from the wrong direction.

Our instinct is to look left, but if you look left, you'll get run over by a double-decker bus. To help us, Thaler says, someone in the British government decided to write on the sidewalks of busy intersections filled with American tourists the words "look right."

"British bureaucrats are no smarter than American bureaucrats," says Thaler, "but they know that tourists tend to look the wrong way and could use a helpful nudge to avoid getting hit by a truck."

As I look around at our current economic situation and see the millions that have been flattened by a collapse that no economist predicted, I can't help but think that anything that keeps us from being hit by the next truck is truly welcome.

Unless economists have a better idea?

Using Psychology to Save You from Yourself , via NPR

Why We Stare

One of the hardest things to teach young children is the practice of not staring at something that's unusual, especially as it relates to other people.

Kids are naturally open and curious, soaking up new information, so when they see a person that's not exactly like them, they treat it as an educational opportunity.

As it turns out, staring at facial deformities is the brain's way of determining if being in close proximity to that person is safe or unsafe.

When the pieces you supply match nothing in the gallery of known facial expressions, when you encounter a person whose nose, mouth or eyes are distorted in a way you have never encountered before, you instinctively lock on. Your gaze remains riveted, and your brain stays tuned for further information. So looking is completely normal.

Now if we could just teach them not to comment on what they see in a voice that can be heard for miles.

Why it's hard not to stare at facial deformities, via BoingBoing

Detecting Liars

Back in my former career, it was often said that it must have really sucked to be one of my kids when it came to trying to tell a lie. I spent 15 years as a fraud investigator, and had attended both basic and advance interview and interrogation schools, so I could spot an untruth walking down 5th Avenue.

Bruce Schneier, writing in his Schneier on Security blog, weighs in on comments made by psychologist Kevin Colwell, from Southern Connecticut State University, who has advised parents, police departments, Pentagon flunkies, and scores of others on lie detecting based on the amount of detail presented by the person in question.

In several studies, Dr. Colwell and Dr. Hiscock-Anisman have reported one consistent difference: People telling the truth tend to add 20 to 30 percent more external detail than do those who are lying. "This is how memory works, by association," Dr. Hiscock-Anisman said. "If you're telling the truth, this mental reinstatement of contexts triggers more and more external details."

There's a measure of truth (!) to this approach, but it's just one piece to an enormously complex puzzle. Does the speaker use significant detail in non-threatening conversations but resorts to a lack of detail when pressed on the topic in question? What about their non-verbal communication mechanisms, mannerisms, posture, and so on?

Here's an example - having been trained as an interrogator, if someone asks me if I know what time it is, my answer is either "yes" or "no", and that's it. 98% of the population will respond with, "Yes, it's 5:15" because that's the customary response. In an interview / interrogation scenario, I want to give up as little information as possible, while the interrogator wants me to spill my guts, metaphorically (and if you're Dick Cheney, literally) speaking.

Does this mean I'm being dishonest in my responses? Not at all. When did it become my job to answer the interrogator in the manner that he or she wants? My responsibility is to me, and anything that puts that at risk is a no-go.

If you think I've committed a crime, charge me. If you don't have enough to charge me, don't expect me to give you the evidence you need. Talk to the hand, buddy.

Schneier on Security: Detecting Liars by Content