Hot For Recessionary Wednesdays: Suicide
Using European Union mortality data for a period of nearly forty years, researchers at Oxford discovered that "for every 1 per cent increase in unemployment, both suicides and homicides rose by 0.8 per cent. When employment fell by 3 per cent or more in one go, suicides leapt by 4.4 per cent and homicides by 6.0 per cent." Ruh roh! In other news about topping yourself, a new study "published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, found that people are far more likely to kill themselves in the middle of the week than in the beginning or the end: almost 25 percent of suicides occur on Wednesdays as compared to 14 percent on Mondays or Saturdays, the two days tied for second-highest suicide rates." There is an impressive chart!
Okay, these numbers all seem to check out. Like you might, because today is THE DREADED WEDNESDAY. But wait: "The study also found if you make it through Wednesday, your risk for suicide plummets by more than half the following day; Thursdays have the lowest rate, with only 11 percent of suicides." So try and hold off one more day; tomorrow's "Samantha Who?" is all new!
Speaking of things that make me want to kill myself, are we just never going to get another morning ("morning") email from Choire ever again?
STRONGLY DEPRESSED
"a small web property, preferably a start-up with low operational costs, a dedicated but unstable-due-to-high-suicide-rates reader base, and a URL of 6 letters or less"
Call me poetic, but Wednesday has always been my day for homicide.
From Hump Day to Jump Day in three generations.
But this is because most FIRINGS are done on Fridays which means Wednesday is usually the laid-off's first day of full sobriety.
Is Saturday night still all right for fighting?
If we could only convince murderers and suicides to team up the whole thing would be more effective.