How Many People Have Committed Suicide on This Forum?

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#34
John G said:
So, how do you know the OP in the link you provided did anything drastic?

I meant " So many people rant here and "they" don't come back to this forum." . It doesn't mean they did anything drastic.
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I don't. I just wrote that no one has heard from him since his last post about committing mass suicide. The OP in this thread asked a odd quiestion considering there is probably not any statics available to answer his question, but I still provided him with a link which may be the case. I don't know. Maybe not. I just thought it was worth sharing.

My mistake. I read your comment wrong. And you're right.
 
#35
If we have two confirmed suicides and 12000 registered users that's probably pretty much in keeping with the rate in the general population; based on a look at the US annual suicide rate you come up with something around 1:8000. And, of course, our 12,000 users represent a more-than-1-year time span, so 2:12000 would actually be significantly under what you'd expect.

Meaning, of course, that there could be a bunch of cases we don't know about, and still be basically in line with the suicidal attrition rate of the overall world.

jdjd09 said:
Seriously, for those people with moderate to severe tinnitus and hearing loss, how many have committed suicide? Are there any post about people doing it on here? I don't see how someone can live a normal life with offcentered hearing and tinnitus. I see people do it I guess, I just don't see how one can live a normal life like this anymore.
Click to expand...

what's a normal life?
 
#36
ceauses97 said:
I hope you quoted the wrong post because your comment seriously didn't make any sense to that I wrote.
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Assuming someone committed suicide after one "rant" post on a forum designed for venting and support is like assuming someone's an alcoholic because you saw them drink at a bar that one time.

It's extremist thinking and you just dont have enough info to draw such a conclusion...
 
#37
So I read over everyone's responses. I asked for legit reasons. I want to know. Some answered the question and some pointed out other points. I appreciate all the responses so far. Sorry if I am not responding to everyone's responses individually right now. I am low energy still ;/. I have read the responses though.

I am trying to find an audiologist to those who say I am not. I am just running out of days off from work to even do anything anymore...................................while I still have a job which may not be for long.

To those who are saying I don't have a legit issue and you all got over it in a couple weeks. I have had ringing without hearing loss before. It bothered me for a few weeks and then I got over it. I feel like some of you are assuming all is the same. I know some, but not all, have hearing loss. This is something different than I had before. Like I'm legitimately about to lose my job over this.
 
#38
But, to act like suicide isn't the answer for some , that's nice to say. However, when someone can't make a living because of there issues and can't quality for disability, that is a problem. I'm not looking to get on disability, but just mentioning that. It's nice to say to some to keep living and act like the ringing is the only issue going on for some.

But, if the answer is just live on for nothing, then I'm sorry but I can't agree with that. Surviving just for the sake of surviving isn't living.
 
#39
I've said this before @jdjd09, but you can't judge your future from how you feel today. You might be someone who is hugely important to society 15 years from now.

So, if anything positive did come of your life, you'd feel even better. The highs feel so much better once you have been through the lows; especially if you hit rock bottom and come back from it.

Give yourself time. Whatever you are thinking now is a blinkered view and it won't be how you feel in the future.
 
#41
Vaba said:
Assuming someone committed suicide after one "rant" post on a forum designed for venting and support is like assuming someone's an alcoholic because you saw them drink at a bar that one time.

It's extremist thinking and you just dont have enough info to draw such a conclusion...
Click to expand...

I didn't assume anything. You did.

The OP on the thread I linked to was a highly active member on this forum. His last post was about commiting mass suicide to draw more attention and awarness to tinnitus. If you look at the comments on his thread, there are many members who are worried if he is alright but without getting any respond from him. No one have heard from him since. I don't what to come up with any fast conlusion or anything, but it surely makes a room for thories when it comes to what happened to him.

Again, just thought it was worth sharing with the threadstarter.
 
#43
@jdjd09 One thing I forgot to say in my (verrrrrrrrrrry) long post is: please find a therapist. Make a few phone calls and get yourself hooked up with someone. There are all sorts of help agencies and people offering sliding scale fees and etc. Keep making phone calls until you find someone. And if when you go, you find that you may not be in sync with that person, stick it out while searching for another. I think you would benefit from having an actual person to talk with and to help with your feelings. And one thing that you cannot see for yourself right now (because you are looking at the world through dark glasses) is that there IS all this hope and future and WAYS to make this better. But you cannot see that with your dark glasses on. And you need someone to help and support you until you are able to take those glasses off and really see. The nature of being down in the dumps is that you get all confused and it is hard to get OUT of the dumps to see that there is a whole world of potential solutions. Please make finding someone helpful to talk to your priority right now. They can help you with your climb from there.

Also, there is the added benefit of connections. If you 1) join a support group, and 2) find a counselor, the people you meet through these venues come with suggestions and NETWORKING. They may be able to hook you up with referrals for better doctors, other resources, etc. By just stepping out your door and making these connections, you can open up paths you didn't know existed.
 
#44
I honestly don't know how I'm still alive,T+H+TTTS+Tridgeminal Neuralgia and absolutely no relief,I'm bed bound unable to listen to any noise without discomfort or pain.You have it easy Jdjd,a hearing aid will probably change your life!
 
#45
So in order to keep matters factual and scientific, I decided to have a 2nd review of the general held belief/view that suicide is not more prevalent among sufferers of tinnitus versus the general population. In particular, I decided to track down information on studies pertaining to sufferers of severe tinnitus. Indeed, tinnitus is very common, and hence without understanding the sub-groups that make up the population of tinnitus sufferers, important characteristics may go un-noticed. The following article is very recent, and takes a look at some of the sub-groups.

Below, is the overall introduction (first page of the article). It would seem that there is indeed reason to think that there is a link between (severe) tinnitus and suicide (attempts) - contrary to established beliefs (not surprising, really). See results, below.

upload_2016-3-28_18-21-28.png




Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26147195

The full article can be acquired by requesting it directly from the authors via ResearchGate.
 
#46
attheedgeofscience said:
So in order to keep matters factual and scientific, I decided to have a 2nd review of the general held belief/view that suicide is not more prevalent among sufferers of tinnitus versus the general population.
Click to expand...
In my opinion, there is a time and a place for some of these conversations and for when it's important to "keep matters scientific." And a support forum with a suicidal member is clearly not one of them. He isn't writing a research paper; he is suffering and looking for some affirmation that suicide is his only way out. Confirming for him that suicide is higher in people with tinnitus does nothing to bring him back from the ledge, it only nudges him toward it.

-Mike
 
#49
Sebastians said:
Statistically, suicide rates in South Korea are IN GENERAL already much higher than in most countries. Any 'real' scientific approach would make note of that. One study means very little in this respect.
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That's probably why they do a "comparative study" within the population itself, don't you think?

Sure suicide rates are higher in Korea, but the suicide rates of the tinnitus population was higher still.
 
#51
jdjd09 said:
To those who are saying I don't have a legit issue and you all got over it in a couple weeks. I have had ringing without hearing loss before. It bothered me for a few weeks and then I got over it. I feel like some of you are assuming all is the same. I know some, but not all, have hearing loss. This is something different than I had before. Like I'm legitimately about to lose my job over this.
Click to expand...
Why does the hearing loss bother you so much? I'm genuinely interested in your perspective on why it causes you so much of a problem?

I have really bad hearing, you already know this. Much, much worse than yours. There are times when I struggle and simply can't function in some environments without some kind of assistance (large board room meetings packed with people, crowded restaurants, etc.). Anyway, I was sitting at dinner yesterday for the holidays with my family and it occurred to me that I could sit there and have a conversation with my family and hear them. I heard my daughters laughs. I talked with my parents about things that were going on. I could be completely deaf and be missing out on all of that. But I'm not, and I was thankful for that. My hearing sucks, sure. But I was still thankful for what I did have.

Maybe you just need a change in perspective somehow?
 
#52
attheedgeofscience said:
That's probably why they do a "comparative study" within the population itself, don't you think?

Sure suicide rates are higher in Korea, but the suicide rates of the tinnitus population was higher still.
Click to expand...

I fail to understand the significance of this? Or put another way: how does this help anyone?

Logic would dictate that any severely debilitating illness is likely to have a higher suicide rate, no?

More importantly, why are we discussing this on a support forum of all places. It's better placed elsewhere. The last thing a new member wants to read is the suicide statistics.

All I'm saying is there's a time and a place.
 
#53
I don't find a single study especially compelling, personally.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11791935
The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether there exists in the scientific literature support for a cause and effect relationship between tinnitus and suicide. MEDLINE and HealthStar databases were queried using the combined search terms "tinnitus" and "suicide" over the time period from 1966 to 2001 for MEDLINE and from 1975 to 2001 for HealthStar. Foreign-language reports were included if they had been translated into English or, at least, if they contained an English-language translation of the abstract. A total of three published reports pertinent to this topic were recovered. None of these reports showed a causal relationship between tinnitus and suicide. More often, patients who had attempted or committed suicide had significant preexisting psychiatric conditions, the most common being depression. Accordingly, it is our conclusion that nowhere in the existing literature is there any evidence supporting a cause and effect relationship between tinnitus and suicide.
Click to expand...

Note that this paper predates the one from Korea by fifteen years; therefore, a newer meta-analysis would have to include that one and compare and contrast with the existing data.

Like @Ed209 I also do not see how this conversation has much utility here. If people wish to kill themselves, that's a fundamental human right, but people posting on support forums looking for help are pretty clearly not attempting such a drastic step.
 
#54
Hearing loss is no where near as bad as tinnitus. There are millions of people who have hearing loss that live blissfully and unaware of it. I do get that it too has it's frustrations by not being able to hear certain things but there's not a insidious noise nagging you all the time.
 
#55
attheedgeofscience said:
So in order to keep matters factual and scientific, I decided to have a 2nd review of the general held belief/view that suicide is not more prevalent among sufferers of tinnitus versus the general population. In particular, I decided to track down information on studies pertaining to sufferers of severe tinnitus. Indeed, tinnitus is very common, and hence without understanding the sub-groups that make up the population of tinnitus sufferers, important characteristics may go un-noticed. The following article is very recent, and takes a look at some of the sub-groups.

Below, is the overall introduction (first page of the article). It would seem that there is indeed reason to think that there is a link between (severe) tinnitus and suicide (attempts) - contrary to established beliefs (not surprising, really). See results, below.

View attachment 9818



Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26147195

The full article can be acquired by requesting it directly from the authors via ResearchGate.
Click to expand...

Since I have access to Research Databases, I read the Article. People with Tinnitus were older than the rest of the sample. Hard to see if "being depressed" or "suicide ideation" is a symptom of Tinnitus or old age. Still, I have 2 problems with this article:

1) Data mining: You cast a net so wide eventually you'll catch whatever you want. You can prove whatever you like with the right statistics, never mind replicability. That's why in my field people keep arguing if the best stocks are "cheap", "profitable", "big brands", etc. everybody is right because everybody cast their own net.

2) Correlation does not imply causation: Mining a database and showing that people with Tinnitus committed suicide at a higher rate doesn't prove Tinnitus causas Suicide.

I won't keep at it, there's ton of stuff about it elsewhere, and that's why I think getting a random paper and placing it in a public forum as it was concrete truth is a dangerous and wrong thing to do.

This whole topic is wrong headed. People, for god's sake, people commit suicide for a lot of reasons. Don't find one to fit your mindset.
 
#56
Zug said:
Since I have access to Research Databases, I read the Article. People with Tinnitus were older than the rest of the sample. Hard to see if "being depressed" or "suicide ideation" is a symptom of Tinnitus or old age. Still, I have 2 problems with this article:

1) Data mining: You cast a net so wide eventually you'll catch whatever you want. You can prove whatever you like with the right statistics, never mind replicability. That's why in my field people keep arguing if the best stocks are "cheap", "profitable", "big brands", etc. everybody is right because everybody cast their own net.

2) Correlation does not imply causation: Mining a database and showing that people with Tinnitus committed suicide at a higher rate doesn't prove Tinnitus causas Suicide.

I won't keep at it, there's ton of stuff about it elsewhere, and that's why I think getting a random paper and placing it in a public forum as it was concrete truth is a dangerous and wrong thing to do.

This whole topic is wrong headed. People, for god's sake, people commit suicide for a lot of reasons. Don't find one to fit your mindset.
Click to expand...

I read a book called nudge which said the same thing about statistics as you just did.

It depends how you interpret the data and what you want it to mean. It gave an example using people newly diagnosed with cancer and then mapped out a cluster of cases all within the same small area. The cases were reported as red dots on a map and you could clearly see one estate had loads of cases and the rest of the area had little to no cases at all. This could imply there is something wrong with the estate where cancer was being frequently reported. Something in the water maybe? It's only when you take a larger area of map that you can see it has no statistical relevance at all.

Statistics can be very misleading and are used by marketing companies for this very reason.
 
#57
Sebastians said:
@attheedgeofscience

Duly noted. However i fail to understand how this pertains to OP's question '... on this forum'.
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Well, once again - read the title of the thread: what does it say? In addition, the following the statement was made...
Atlantis said:
According to statistics, tinnitus sufferers don't commit suicide more than healthy counterparts. Your question doesn't serve any purpose.
Click to expand...
...and I decided to test that statement (because that's what a person with a scientific mindset would do).

Please also note, that, I did not bring up this topic (suicide). But... now that it was brought up, I decided to comment on it. That is my right after all. Agree?

As for my post regarding the suicide-paper being potentially counterproductive, I should like to mention that there is such a thing as reverse psychology. Just recently, I helped a member of TT get in contact with a group of researchers that run a tinnitus clinic, and, in advance we discussed some basics of tinnitus. We got on to the topic of psychology, and the researcher - a person with a ph.d in neuro-psychology - mentioned how for instance the seasons can bring back people from a less depressive state (i.e. winter depression going away as spring comes along). I said to the researcher that in fact, the opposite can happen: because the person who is depressed sees just happy people around him/her during springtime - that may actually worsen the depression (i.e. a feeling of "everyone except me is doing better").

On TinnitusTalk, I believe there is a lot of what I call "silent sufferers" - that is members/visitors who rarely - if ever - post on the board. These people don't have a voice - and - may falsely be led to believe that they are the only ones not doing well (because everyone else - the more vocal members - are apparently telling everyone else the standard stuff such as "you will get better", "it is only the beginning", and "I have been where you are" etc.). In addition, I have come to know - over time - that a number of these more vocal members are - themselves - not doing too well. I will tend to see some of them mentioning to a member that it will get over time, only, to then see that same member posting about their own difficulties in another thread. I'd be happy to call some of these members out for you (with examples) - shall I?

What this all comes down to is topics such as:
  • Leadership
  • Psychology
  • Decision-making
If you were heading into battle in WWII you would like to have as much information about the enemy as possible - better for you and your planning, right? Well, the same is true for other situations (believe it or not). As long as humans do not confront and understand the problems they face, status quo will be upheld. This is also true for medicine.

I like to do reviews on many many things. One topic for instance, might be doctor-patient interactions. The following is not such a one, but kind of highlights the problems that can happen during such an interaction.



Often, I see a lot "weakness" on the part of the doctor as they lack the mental power to address the situation (very visible in certain interactions - search for them if you will e.g. cancer diagnosis consultation).

What that all leads to is the old concept of "sweeping things under the rug" - and in my opinion that helps no one...

laneous-the_rug_pulled_from_under_you-fallen-pride-sweeping_it_under_the_carpet-rugs-ibn0037_low.jpg
 
#58
Ed209 said:
Statistics can be very misleading and are used by marketing companies for this very reason.
Click to expand...
Ummmmm.... but the article I posted was not made by a marketing company - agree?

And... there isn't that much to screw up with when you have two comparative studies on the same population: one stating that suicide attempts is twice as high for people with tinnitus. Doesn't get much clearer than that does it?

Here is a link to the book "Alice in Wonderland" - I thought I'd post it for you and others (it seems it is more suited for your tastes and psychological profiles):

www.amazon.com/Alices-Adventures-Wonderland-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486275434
 
#59
Ed209 said:
I read a book called nudge which said the same thing about statistics as you just did.

It depends how you interpret the data and what you want it to mean. It gave an example using people newly diagnosed with cancer and then mapped out a cluster of cases all within the same small area. The cases were reported as red dots on a map and you could clearly see one estate had loads of cases and the rest of the area had little to no cases at all. This could imply there is something wrong with the estate where cancer was being frequently reported. Something in the water maybe? It's only when you take a larger area of map that you can see it has no statistical relevance at all.

Statistics can be very misleading and are used by marketing companies for this very reason.
Click to expand...

There's a lot of research on the problems with research, if you don't mind the circularity ;). That's why every serious researcher that I know would never ever point to a single paper and say "this is the truth". Medicine isn't my field but I sure know my math. This paper proves nothing.

T is a pain in the ass. A lot of things are. Most of us here aren't PHD's looking for a cure (Fortunately). Life is tough, whatever, this topic is still wrong. :)
 
#60
attheedgeofscience said:
Ummmmm.... but the article I posted was not made by a marketing company - agree?

And... there isn't that much to screw up with when you have two comparative studies on the same population: one stating that suicide attempts is twice as high for people with tinnitus. Doesn't get much clearer than that does it?

Here is a link to the book "Alice in Wonderland" - I thought I'd post it for you and others (it seems it is more suited for your tastes and psychological profiles):

www.amazon.com/Alices-Adventures-Wonderland-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486275434
Click to expand...

I don't see how you can have conclusive proof of anything from one paper based on the statistics they analysed. It needs to be replicated many times over and peer reviewed.

If they pooled the data from a 1000 people you will get result A. Pool the data from 10,000 people and you'll get result B. Pool it from 5,000,000 people and you will get result C.

All three will be different. You need much more data than this to draw any kind of decisive conclusions.
 
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