By: Diane Benjamin
The County Justice Committee is meeting tomorrow. Coroner Kathy Yoder has listed 3 more suicides for August 2020. PDF page 5 https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7730
I asked Kathy for additional information including ages, she sent the following multi-year recap. The total to date in 2020 is only 3 less than 2019 with 4 more months reporting to go.
My question is: Is there any correlation between watching the city council meetings (or attending them) and the suicides that occur in McLean County?
I know that I personally feel pretty hopeless about the future after watching any of them!
So what exactly do you propose about the uptick in white male suicides? Better mental health services? The ACA is currently before the Supreme Court and could be repealed. That means not only millions of people will be without access to health care, but the parity of mental health services that was an component of ACA will go away. It’s pretty hypocritical of you to point out high suicides rates among white men and insist that the services that would save them cease with nothing to replace those services.
Maybe because they don’t work. Government does nothing but make life harder, destruction of families especially isolation, is a greater culprit. Notice the kids? What is unaffordable coverage doing for them? The only people on ACA are people who have to have expensive insurance. The rest are on Medicaid getting cramping service.
Sorry but you’re wrong. There are over 20 million people who are enrolled with ACA and gained insurance under that government guaranteed insurance. So that many people will be losing their health insurance with no replacement in sight. More importantly, there were benefit improvement under ACA. From the elimination of insurance caps to women paying more for the same services, ACA gave everyone enhanced benefits.
Kids? Under ACA parents were able to insure their children until they were 26-years-old. The early twenties is the time that serious mental illness emerges in children. So there is a huge benefit for this protection, kids get the mental health treatment they need.
That was one of the many extended protections under ACA. Other enhanced benefits under ACA was mental was health parity. Expensive insurance? So how much would it cost if someone had no health insurance? Ever price out medical bills if you have no insurance? Talk about expensive. In most cases, the uninsured cost everyone with higher taxes. Under ACA medical bills were trending down and health care was eating up less of our GDP.
You’re certainly doing nothing to alleviate the stigma of suicide or mental illness. Other than going on a rant about how horrible government is, what is your proposal for getting to people who are hurting? This is not the first time that there has been economic difficulties that have led to a heightened suicides rates. The Great Depression of the 1930’s and the 2008 economic collapse saw an increase in suicides. In fact white middle age males are the demographic that is at most risk. The overwhelming method they use to commit suicide is by their own hand guns. I don’t see you pointing out that fact.
So you have no inkling how to address the suicide rates among this demographic or the different demographics in those posted statistics. It’s easy to point something out and go on rants about atrocious, evil government. The fact is that many local and state governments have services to address mental illness. Perhaps you should write about those services.
20 million because no other insurance can be purchased! Bye, not worth attempting to have a discussion with you.
Not just the left, but politicians in general misname, often opposite-name, their legislation. Just as the ‘Fair Tax Amendment’ is fair to no one but politicians and those they gift with our tax money. the ‘Affordable Care Act’ did nothing to make healthcare more affordable, and was intended as a stepping stone towards making it much more expensive. Both *Should* be shot down.
While ‘treatment’ for suicide is a good thing, it would be better and more cost effective to address the underlying causes.
Depression is exacerbated by social distancing. Unless you’re over 70 or otherwise in a high-risk group, the current trend towards mandated social distancing causes more harm than good, and may even cause more harm than good among those who Are susceptible, as chronic loneliness is itself a health risk.
Unemployment saps one’s sense of self-worth; leads to boredom, restlessness, and depression; exacerbates domestic and child abuse; and leads to money-related issues like poorer health care, worse nutrition, and reduced hygiene. Pritzger’s Destroy Illinois plan ignores all these factors, aiming instead to destroy small businesses and workers’ livelihoods, force citizens to buy a vaccine from a company he’s invested in, and guilting the federal government into paying off Illinois politicians’ spending misdeeds with our (grand-)children’s future incomes.
We need to address the trends of society, our legal system, and our institutions becoming increasingly racist and sexist. ‘Black Live Matter’ (note the capitalization) means others do not, especially white lives and blue lives. Racial quotas may have good intentions, but they are still racist. If a man is accused of sexual misdeeds, or to a lesser extent Any misdeed involving a female or child, he is often considered guilty until proven innocent, and sometimes In Spite Of being proven innocent, usually with little to no consequence to the accuser. The media inundate us with messages of ‘strong, competent women and girls’ and ‘stupid and incompetent (except at being evil) men and boys’. A huge swath of ‘worthwhile’ males are abandoning the ideas of dating, marriage, and fatherhood due to the all-too-accurate perception that the potential downsides of each often outweigh the upsides.
I’m not saying we all need to click out heels and wish ‘There’s no place like Leave It To Beaver”, but many changes for the better have been taken past the point of diminishing returns to the point of actual harm, not to mention changes-for-change’s-sake that never were for the better.
We need to vote out ‘harmsters’ of all political stripes and replace them with real leaders and real public servants, and we need to vote with our wallets and feet and speak up about why. Many think we are headed towards civil war, and they may be right – only actively working Against it will prove them wrong.