Are affordable apartments easy and cheap suicide prevention?

Comments

• PunnyName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It’s only a single anecdote: when I was unemployed housed - but had a significant savings - I was enjoying life more, making friends, exploring food and locations more, and generally having a good time. I was barely if ever considering suicide.

  I’m employed but living in a homeless shelter, and I’m so fucking stressed, I often consider taking that final exit.

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• Joshi@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  First off, I’m a huge housing first advocate and it is completely uncontroversial that for a wide range of outcomes housing first policies are vastly superior not to mention just that it is morally correct.

  Whether unsuitable housing/homelessness is directly implicated in suicidality is an interesting question so I did a little bit of digging.

  One study from Taiwan showed a relationship between housing affordability and suicidality but the effect is only present when using one measure of affordability and disappears when measuring affordability in other ways suggesting it may not be a real effect.

  Another, older, study from the EU found that lack of affordable housing had no impact on suicidality but the driving factor in the increase in suicide during the great recession was job loss.

  You could interpret this evidence as mixed but IMO unless more convincing evidence comes out I would have to say that at a societal level it isn’t a big factor.

  The impact of housing-price-related indices on suicide rates in Taiwan

  The findings revealed that higher housing rental index values were associated with increased suicide rates in young and middle-aged adults compared to the elderly population, regardless of sex. However, this association was not observed with the other two housing-price-related indexes (i.e. housing price index and housing price to income ratio).

  Economic shocks, resilience, and male suicides in the Great Recession: cross-national analysis of 20 EU countries

  BACKGROUND During the 2007-11 recessions in Europe, suicide increases were concentrated in men. Substantial differences across countries and over time remain unexplained. We investigated whether increases in unaffordable housing, household indebtedness or job loss can account for these population differences, as well as potential mitigating effects of alternative forms of social protection. And RESULTS Changes in levels of unaffordable housing had no effect on suicide rates (P = 0.32); in contrast, male suicide increases were significantly associated with each percentage point rise in male unemployment, by 0.94% (95% CI: 0.51-1.36%), and indebtedness, by 0.54% (95% CI: 0.02-1.06%).

  Effect of Housing First on Suicidal Behaviour: A Randomised Controlled Trial of Homeless Adults with Mental Disorders

  Compared to baseline, there was an overall trend of decreased past-month suicidal ideation (estimate = –.57, SE = .05, P < 0.001), with no effect of treatment group (i.e., HF vs. TAU; estimate = –.04, SE = .06, P = 0.51). Furthermore, there was no effect of treatment status (estimate = –.10, SE = .16, P = 0.52) on prevalence of suicide attempts (HF = 11.9%, TAU = 10.5%) during the 2-year follow-up period.

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• nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Disease prevention too

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• TokenEffort@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think of me but I also think of children in abusive families trans people who aren’t supported etc like cutting ties should be easy does the government know that we have several people willing to work and pay bills but can’t because the next step is too high?

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• lath@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Having a personal safe space can help. It can also become a shackling crutch.

  External support is ultimately needed though, as a root cause is loneliness in an unwelcoming world.

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• fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No. There’s a reason cheap apartments in China have enclosed balconies.

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  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Off topic, but I remember my apartment in China had like metal bars protecting the windows in the apartmeny, but in the stairwell of the building, there was a sort of “window area” that isn’t protected. As a kid, I had fear of heights, but also have intrusive thoughts about falling out the building.

    Like, I’m gonna try to illustrate on my notes app:

    Image

    So that little rectangle is the apartment and the smaller rectangle is the door. So the right side of the stairs goes down. Then ir turns 180 degrees around then goes down further, get it? On in the middle platform where it turns (in between floors, there is a “window” area. The window looked like this:

    Image

    The part colored below is a concrete barrier. About like 3-4 feet in height (feet, because I’ve been acustomed to useing american measuremenys).

    Above that is just nothing. Zero barrier. Outside is the air, and below is death.

    So if you were an adult, you could just leap over the concrete barrier and fall to your death.

    I lived like 5-6 floors high.

    Every day I would fear I accidentally run down the stairs too fast and accidentally leap over and die.

    I’m pretty sure that barrier is not gonna be legal in the US. (Correct me if I’m wrong)

    (Sorry about the shitty illuatrarion, words are hard to describe)

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• deadcatbounce@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Kind of. My parents were appalling people. I was a good kid but it didn’t matter.

  You can leave them, but you can’t leave yourself. When you get away, learn to be kind to yourself. It’s much more difficult than it sounds.

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• jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Absolutely. No question.

  It’s not a complete solution of course, but it’s part of one.

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