Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men

sqeak

Ooof, not even that old here and I'm feeling that. Things are pretty bad all over. Gets hard to want to be around. AI took my job recently and I've been moved back to helpdesk and just awaiting further layoffs. There's not much fun in intellectual pursuits any longer as LLMs have taken it all. All my fun hobby projects are just jokes now as anyone with money can easily outdo me with an LLM. Sad times...

Traubenfuchs

https://archive.ph/sBfx5 Who can blame them? After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?

happytoexplain

I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. Between (some of) the effects of AI on my career and hobbies, and the effects of politics on my country and even my own town, and many more problems, I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been demeaned or destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist. And this isn't even to mention money, and what my future is looking like, despite having every possible intrinsic and external advantage in The Greatest Country on Earth. I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.

dingaling911

In my circle, I've objectively had both the best and the worst life. I can tell when people are thinking about suicide because they reach out to find out if I've done myself in yet lol. For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.

stego-tech

Just got “over the hill” here. It’s… complicated , but not at all surprising on the whole. My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future. Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates. At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.

dyauspitr

We all know what the problem is.

Cypher

at 40 I became a woman and never been happier

JumpinJack_Cash

Guys should go back to the basics. Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates. A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which is made up of large amount of introspection, extremely fine margins between good times and awful times and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues , the avoidance of social faux passes, planning years and years into the future down to the smallest detail . That's the perfect recipe for depression for guys We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need to have sex shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.

littlexsparkee

The things that motive me to stick around are holding the people ruining this world to account, documenting it and trying to thwart their efforts, a curiosity in seeing just how bad the climate crisis gets (how do we react, can it wake us from our stupor), and a desire to learn and help others (whether volunteering or just life advice). An absurdist lens helps provide some levity and not take things so seriously. I had to step back from my career to focus on a mobility issue and at this point I don't know if the job path will continue to be there or even if I care. I'm focusing on small pleasures for now - cup of tea, exercise, peace and quiet. Music and film help provide a sense of meaning and catharsis.

mmcgaha

I am not much of a gamer and sure as hell don't keep up with many people that I gamed with 20 years ago but there was one guy that I would talk with ever few years. I talked with him and a few months later he was gone. I don't know why his suicide hit me so hard. Maybe because I connect him to a different phase of my life. Maybe because he was the guy who was the life of chat. I don't know. What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.

ryanbigg

I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are). I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job. My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel. The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI) I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.

munificent

Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week: I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain. There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide , written not too long after the Industrial Revolution. In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how. In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster. I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing. It's a psychologically very difficult time. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

bobsmooth

To anyone with a degree not in software, you can pivot to a hands-on job. I'm a technician for factory equipment. AI is not replacing me for a long time.

projektfu

The graph shows that suicides overall are down from 30 years ago, while the same cohort that was higher in 1985-2005 (25-44) is now higher in 2005-2025 (45-64). Perhaps there is something about the generation more than the situation or the age of the individual.

akimbostrawman

but how does that effect women?

the__alchemist

I'm 40 and am accepting I will be single forever. I'm in shape / constantly lifting weights, dress well, work hard on maintaining a good attitude, and am financially stable etc. But not a great face, and extremely skinny (Think Oppenheimer or Bin Laden), am not funny or charismatic, and am not into dogs. Dating is a kick in the butt. Women don't "Feel the spark"

dondraper36

I am not suicidal and I am lucky to have loving people who I also love around. That said, with all the rapid changes in the software engineering industry and in life in general, I sometimes wonder what I am doing with my life and why. It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.

mring33621

I graduated college in 1992. 2 male friends from college died by their own hand within the last decade. By most measures, they were successful professionals.

sheepscreek

I would have guessed middle-aged men and women, not just men. I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation. Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting. Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.