Suicide Increases Linked To Lack Of Religion?
So-called deaths of despair such as from suicide or alcohol abuse have been skyrocketing for middle-aged white Americans
It’s been blamed on various phenomenon, including opioid abuse. But a new research paper finds a different culprit — declining religious practice.
The working paper, from Tyler Giles of Wellesley College, Daniel Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame, and Tamar Oostrom of The Ohio State University, looked at the relationship between religiosity and mortality from deaths of despair. The paper was circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The authors noted that many measures of religious adherence began to decline in the late 1980s. They find that the large decline in religious practice was driven by the group experiencing the subsequent increases in mortality: white middle-aged Americans without a college degree.
States that experienced larger declines in religious participation in the last 15 years of the 20th century saw larger increases in deaths of despair.
The researchers looked at the repeal of blue laws in particular. Blue laws limited commerce, typically on Sunday mornings. “These laws have been shown to be strongly related to religious practice, creating discrete changes in incentives to attend religious services that are plausibly unrelated to other drivers of religiosity,” they said.
The repeal of blue laws had a 5- to 10-percentage-point impact on weekly attendance of religious services, and increased the rate of deaths of despair by 2 deaths per 100,000 people, they found — accounting for a “reasonably large share of the initial rise in the deaths of despair.”
What’s also interesting is that the impact seems to be driven by actual formal religious participation, rather than belief or personal activities like prayer. “These results underscore the importance of cultural institutions such as religious establishments in promoting well-being,” they said.
They further added that they didn’t know of any cultural phenomenon that matches the mortality patterns, which are seen for both men and women, but not in other countries, and in both rural and urban settings, but mostly middle-aged, less-educated white individuals.
“The decline in religiosity matches mortality trends in all these characteristics,” they wrote.
The authors also pushed back on the opioid theory. They said OxyContin was first introduced as a prescription drug in 1996, yet already by then deaths of despair for middle-aged white Americans were well above trend.
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VOWG
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If your only anchor is government then your ship is adrift.
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Tom
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I would bet it’s got more to do with big pharma (mental health?) drugs than anything else.
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schutzhund
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Has anyone looked at modern culture?
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Tom Anderson
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My impression is that Western Civilization is just about gone. It peaked in the French and Scottish enlightenment, forebear of both an American republic, expressing the godly sanctity of individual life, and its antithesis in the roots of socialism.
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Robert Beatty
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All true. So what to do about it before it is too late. My view is we need to change to a form of bottom-up government. This is similar to the system which has provided political stability to Switzerland for several centuries. In Australia this can be done with a single change to our constitution. See https://bosmin.com/ICS/CIR-Australia.pdf Other countries need to do their own evaluation, but you are welcome to use the template.
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Frank S.
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There’s little doubt society has become more permissive and immoral over the years, and I was around during the “free love” generation! Exploration and experimentation are typical human traits. We are a curious species. When it came time to investigate “religion”, specifically, the Bible, I was determined to try to make sense of what seemed a jumbled historical account. Having a rudimentary ‘belief’ in God (owing mostly to certain inexplicable happenings, and one truly cathartic event), I approached Bible study as an Agatha Christie story, scouring for historic facts in reference books, piecing together timelines and flowcharts. The result, after 13 years of intense study: its all quite true.
Since asking God to be the CEO of my life, and I His employee, I’ve never been depressed or fearful. There have been gripping challenges, but asking God for help and strength makes all the difference between despair and victory.
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