As attempted suicide was a criminal act until the 1950s?, in the UK, the real figures were under-reported by a big margin. Successful suicide was a mortal sin and would have been also under-reported. Barbiturate overdoses were reduced drastically by prescribing agreements by General Practitioners and the change from 'Town' gas to natural gas was very effective although some would-be suicides achieved their aim by blowing themselves up instead. The recent reduction in packet size of drugs such as Paracetamol has also reduced the suicide rates. I thought that suicide rates tended to reduce sightly when there were crises in the world but I have no data on that. The actual attempt is only the tip of the iceberg and perhaps a better index of suicudal tendency is to look at other realated activities that may be associated with depression, eg counselling, rate of Anti-depressive medication or the type of activity that is often associated with a short life such as heavy drinking anti-social behaviour etc. Of course we lutenists can avoid all this by playing well and often, which act probably increases the level of brain transmitter substances such as Serotonin and protects us from depression!!. How does Leonard Cohen compare with John Dowland for precipitating suicidal thoughts? CHB
-----Original Message----- From: Howard Posner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 15 November 2004 16:24 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Lute playing in 2004. Herbert Ward wrote: > I've read that the suicide rate has quadrupled in the past 60 years for > young adult males, (and doubled for females). > From this, it is reasonable to assume that modern lutenists operate in a > profound general society-wide emotional deficit, compared to the period of > their literature's production. I think the only assumptions, reasonable or otherwise, that stem from the numbers is that more young Americans commit suicide now than half a century ago. We don't know what the suicide rate in Europe in 1600 was. Nor do I think you can conclude that there is a "profound general society-wide emotional deficit" simply because 99.99% of Americans in the higher-risk categories do not commit suicide now, as opposed to 99.995% sixty years ago. HP To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
