"In the United States, suicide accounts for approximately 15% to 20% of all deaths among young men and boys between the ages of 15 and 34.
... the only cause of death that outnumbers suicide is "unintentional injuries" (which primarily includes accidental drug overdoses and motor vehicle crashes)."
I know I have harped on this before, but deaths from motor vehicle crashes are *never* considered suicides, but rather attributed to speeding, loss of control, or the like.
Yet at least some of them must be suicides.
It is a safe bet that 15%-20% of deaths due to sole-occupant, single vehicle crashes are suicides. It may be difficult to tell which ones are, but to assume that motor vehicles are never a means of suicide seems preposterous.
Meaning the actual suicide rate is bound to be higher than 20%.
And very few drug overdoses are recorded as suicides as well (which I've covered before).
Then there's "legal intervention" (where person is killed by cop, etc) -- some of those are "suicide by cop", most likely. And some homicides could be an indirect form of suicide (as per one of the suicides in Demons, the Dostoevsky book I just finished reading... ugh.... that's the "tragic" form, and in Discworld books, in the Guards subseries, Pratchett joked that some of the deaths in the Mended Drum (which were homicides) were clearly suicides.)
It's difficult to ask somebody what their intention was when they're dead.
Of course, when it comes to teen boys, if you ask them about some of the crazy stuff they do, you will not necessarily get a coherent answer about motivations. It seemed like it was fun at the time.
"Yes, I went snowmobiling off this cliff... no, I didn't want to die."
To those of us who are older (or female), it may look clearly suicidal, but it may actually be thrill-seeking stupidity. Difficult to tell.
According to AI:
"In the United States, suicide accounts for approximately 15% to 20% of all deaths among young men and boys between the ages of 15 and 34.
... the only cause of death that outnumbers suicide is "unintentional injuries" (which primarily includes accidental drug overdoses and motor vehicle crashes)."
I know I have harped on this before, but deaths from motor vehicle crashes are *never* considered suicides, but rather attributed to speeding, loss of control, or the like.
Yet at least some of them must be suicides.
It is a safe bet that 15%-20% of deaths due to sole-occupant, single vehicle crashes are suicides. It may be difficult to tell which ones are, but to assume that motor vehicles are never a means of suicide seems preposterous.
Meaning the actual suicide rate is bound to be higher than 20%.
And very few drug overdoses are recorded as suicides as well (which I've covered before).
Then there's "legal intervention" (where person is killed by cop, etc) -- some of those are "suicide by cop", most likely. And some homicides could be an indirect form of suicide (as per one of the suicides in Demons, the Dostoevsky book I just finished reading... ugh.... that's the "tragic" form, and in Discworld books, in the Guards subseries, Pratchett joked that some of the deaths in the Mended Drum (which were homicides) were clearly suicides.)
It's difficult to ask somebody what their intention was when they're dead.
Of course, when it comes to teen boys, if you ask them about some of the crazy stuff they do, you will not necessarily get a coherent answer about motivations. It seemed like it was fun at the time.
"Yes, I went snowmobiling off this cliff... no, I didn't want to die."
To those of us who are older (or female), it may look clearly suicidal, but it may actually be thrill-seeking stupidity. Difficult to tell.