Long Unemployment Leads to More Suicide

Today I saw an alarming subject while looking at a world newa magazine and wanted to post about theat instead of myself. Don't worry; I am still sufficiently self centered and am not going to turn into a political blogger or a news blogger. Sometimes what is going on in the world around me affects us on a personal enough level that we are distracted from how much we love obsessing about the things in our own heads, and today is one of those times.

So, unemployment causes spikes in depression and divorce (two leading causes of suicidal thoughts). Being unemployed forces you to look at not being able to care for yourself, and family, and being left without everything you've worked so hard for; even the prospect of being homeless. In modern life acquisition is how we measure success and when we stand to lose those possessions suidide begans to look loke a decent option. To me the correspondence of a spike in unemployment being followed by a spike in suicide is not surprising.

So why am I bringing it up? There is something surprising about these tales of the down-trodden. The surprise is not that in a recession we are more likely to give up, the shock is the responce of our government.

The government has decided the proper way to address the suicide/unemployment connection is to spend millions of dollars on further economic studies supporting the findings, setting up more volunteer crisis hotlines, and advertising the importance a=of those with steady incomes to show brotherly love to the under-employed. Now, looked at as individual efforts of good will, these efforts seem to be great strides by our government is taking, spending all this money, despite the recession, to find a happier America. Problem is these nice efforts aren't an attempt at a solution to the crisis but rather a way to deal with the crisis. Why isn't government sticking that money into employment so the grudgingly unemployed can help themselves?

Think about it, when you look at the world do you find it is complete? Is America producing at full capacity? Is the reason there is unemployment because there aren't enough things for the full population to be involved in? NO! I personally know that I want someone inventing ways to make my electronics work better, doing research on nutrition to offer me healthy options so I don't have to add food studies to my to-do list, and another freakin' check line opened so I don't have to wait behind twenty other people to buy my one sandwich. There are jobs to be created and people to fill them, so what is the problem? The money we have is being underutilized. We need our country's resources in the most efficient manner to produce most and employ most. In turn the country will have a natural upturn. The economy and the mood will go up and suicide rates will go down.

There is a hopelessness in idle hands and idle minds, but that is much more than this topic and this post can cover. The point is, I think Americans have just enough on their plates to keep them busy enough to keep their heads down, but this is still the people's country and the people need to look more closely at false solutions to find ways to live instead of ways to deal with whatever tradgedy strikes. We need to band together behind solutions because polititions need the majority to pursaude them onto a new path of thought. Remeber the problem solving classes we all took in school and solve problems not avoiding them with coping methods.