Association of suicide rates of elderly persons with fertility rates

A negative correlation between societal suicide rates and social integration has been reported, but rarely specifically examined for suicide rates of the elderly although suicide rates of elderly persons are among the highest. The associations of suicide rates of elderly persons and fertility rates for 81 countries were examined using data from the World Health Organisation and United Nations. Fertility rates were considered a proxy measure for social integration. Multiple regression analysis indicated that suicide rates for males and females in the age bands 65-74 years and 75+ years were independently (negative) correlated with fertility rates. Fertility rates, as a measure of social integration, may interact with, modify and mediate the effect of cultural factors on suicide rates of elderly persons.     

A quantitative analysis of chain-schedule performance

Six pigeons were trained with a chain variable-interval variable-interval schedule on the left key and with reinforcers available on the right key on a single variable-interval schedule arranged concurrently with both links of the chain. All three schedules were separately and systematically varied over a wide range of mean intervals. During these manipulations, the obtained reinforcer rates on constant arranged schedules also frequently changed systematically. Increasing reinforcer rates in Link 2 of the chain increased response rates in both links and decreased response rates in the variable-interval schedule concurrently available with Link 2. Increasing Link-1 reinforcer rates increased Link-1 response rates and decreased Link-2 response rates. Increasing reinforcer rates on the right-key schedule decreased response rates in Link 1 of the chain but did not affect the rate in Link 2. The results extend and amplify previous analyses of chain-schedule performance and help define the effects that a quantitative model must describe. However, the complexity of the results, and the fact that constant arranged reinforcer schedules did not necessarily lead to constant obtained reinforcer rates, precluded a quantitative analysis.     

Suicide among adolescents and young adults: a cross-national comparison of 34 countries

Few cross-national reports have examined suicide rates among adolescents and young adults. A survey of suicides among 15-24-year-olds in 34 of the wealthiest nations demonstrated that 15,555 youths killed themselves in a 1-year study period. Thirty-four percent of these suicides were firearm-related. Finland led the participating nations in total and firearm-related suicide rates. An association was found between divorce rates and youth suicide rates, firearm-related suicide among youths, and suicide rates among young males. For a smaller sample of countries, an association was found between firearm availability and firearm-related suicide rates among youths and suicide rates among young males.     

11 Suicide in an International Perspective

Epidemiological trends in national suicide rates were identified, including a slowdown in the 1980s in the suicide rates of nations with the highest rates and a rising male suicide rate worldwide. A review of theories of national differences in suicide rates permitted selection of a small set of predictor variables, which were quite successful in predicting the suicide rates of 17 industrialized nations.     

Suicide and homicide rates: their relationship to latitude and longitude and to the weather

The variation of suicide and homicide rates in the major standard metropolitan statistical areas of the United States was explored to see whether regional variations in temperature and precipitation could account for some of the variation. Controls for temperature eliminated the North-South variation in suicide rates, but not the North-South variation in homicide rates or the East-West variation in suicide rates. Only the correlation between precipitation and homicide rates survived controls for latitude and longitude.     

Drugs and punished responding I: rate-dependent effects under multiple schedules

The effects of drugs were studied in pigeons whose responses were punished with electric shock during one component of a multiple fixed-interval 5-min fixed-interval 5-min schedule of food presentation. Most of the drugs analyzed for rate-dependent effects increased low rates of both punished and unpunished responding, while increasing higher rates less, or decreasing them; however, low rates of punished responding sometimes were increased more by pentobarbital, diazepam, and chlordiazepoxide than were matched rates of unpunished responding. In contrast, d-amphetamine and chlorpromazine usually increased low rates of unpunished responding more than matched rates of punished responding. These two drugs also decreased high rates of unpunished responding less than they decreased high rates of punished responding. Thus, the effects of drugs on punished responding depend on the control rate of punished responding; however, the rate-dependent effects of drugs on punished responding are not always the same as they are for unpunished responding.     

A Comparative Evaluation of Police Suicide Rate Validity

The authors assessed sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value of official police suicide rates and compared them to municipal workers. Deaths officially classified as suicide, accidental, and undetermined were submitted to a panel of medical examiners for validation. Six cases originally in the accident and undetermined rubric were reclassified as suicide. Official police suicide rates had less sensitivity (83.3% compared to 92.3%) of actual suicides than municipal worker rates. Police suicide rates also showed a lower negative proportion than municipal worker rates (86.2% compared to 98.7%). A generalizable sensitivity proportion equation for assessing suicide rates in other police groups is presented.     

Predicting murder rates of police and civilians by each other

For 1960-1992, while divorce rates predicted the general homicide rates, neither divorce nor unemployment rates predicted the rates with which police killed civilians or civilians killed police.     

Facilitation and suppression of human loss-avoidance by signaled, unavoidable loss

A 15-sec stimulus followed by unavoidable monetary loss was presented to human subjects who were avoiding loss on a free-operant schedule. As has been observed in studies where shock is the aversive event, initial reactions to the pre-loss stimulus were transient increases in overall and stimulus rates. Unlike shock studies, continued training produced decreased rates, in the presence of the 15-sec stimulus, which were maintained in two of three subjects. Subsequent observations indicated that lowered rates were a function of the subject's rate of avoidance responding, the duration of the stimulus, and the scheduling of avoidable losses. Increasing the duration of the stimulus eliminated lowered rates in the presence of the stimulus and subsequent exposures to conditions which previously produced lowered rates did not result in recovery of the phenomenon. Introduction of the pre-loss stimulus on an extinction baseline (avoidable losses were omitted), however, reinstituted lowered rates. It is proposed that the pre-loss stimulus assumed discriminative control over low rates because responding in the presence of the stimulus was ineffective in avoiding the unavoidable loss. Recovery from lowered rates is attributed to the occurrence of avoidable losses during the stimulus period, and maintenance of lowered rates on the extinction schedule to the omission of such avoidable losses.     

Parametric effects of reinforcement frequency, amount of reinforcement, and required response force on sheltered workshop behavior

Three experiments involving parametric manipulation of reinforcement contingencies were performed with retardates in an automated Sheltered Workshop token economy. Experiment I showed that with amount of reinforcement held constant, work rates were positively related to reinforcement rates on fixed-interval schedules and inversely related to reinforcement rates on fixed-ratio schedules. Experiment II demonstrated an interaction between frequency of ratio reinforcement and torque required to complete a work unit: work rates were positively related to reinforcement rates when required response force was high and negatively related to reinforcement rates when required response force was low. Experiment III revealed that, with reinforcement frequency held constant, there was in inverse relationship between amount of reinforcement and work rate.     

Firearm legislation and statewide suicide rates: The moderating role of household firearm ownership levels

Firearm legislation is associated with statewide suicide rates; however, prior research has often relied upon older data and categorical legislative grades while also failing to consider the nuanced role of firearm ownership. Therefore, the robust literature base on legislation and suicide has not directly examined regarding the extent to which the value of legislation hinges upon the rate of firearm ownership in a given state. The current study examined 2015 US statewide firearm legislation strength scores from Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and 2016 statewide suicide rates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Firearm legislation strength was inversely associated with statewide overall and firearm suicide rates, but not with non‐firearm suicide rates. Firearm ownership rates moderated the association between firearm legislation strength and statewide overall suicide rates. Specifically, firearm legislation strength was inversely associated with statewide overall suicide rates at mean and high levels of firearm ownership. Findings support the potential utility of firearm legislation as part of a national effort to decrease US suicide deaths, particularly in areas with higher firearm ownership rates.     

The Change in Suicide Rates between 2002 and 2011 in China

Chinese suicide rates have been reported in various studies in the past two decades, but few of them were based on national data. The most recent mortality data (2002–2011) provided by the China Ministry of Health and the detailed census data provided by the National Population Census were used in this study. We calculated the age‐, gender‐, and region‐specific suicide rates and their trends in the past 10 years between 2002 and 2011. The overall suicide rates in China decreased during the study period. The rural/urban ratio of the suicide rates has been significantly reduced from the ratio in the 1990s, and male suicide rates have exceeded those of females. Age was positively associated with suicide rates without the two peaks found in the suicide rates over 20 years ago. The Chinese suicide rates have significantly declined in the past decade, with withering of the unique suicide rate patterns previously found in Chinese suicides about 20 years ago.     

Effects of response rate, reinforcement frequency, and the duration of a stimulus preceding response-independent food

Food-reinforced key pecking in the pigeon was maintained under a four-component multiple schedule. In two components, responding was maintained at high rates under a random-ratio schedule. In the other two components, responding was maintained at low rates under a schedule that specified a minimum interresponse time. For both high and low response rates, one of the schedule components was associated with a high reinforcement frequency and the other components with a lower reinforcement frequency. During performance under these schedules, a stimulus terminated by access to response-independent food was periodically presented. The duration of this pre-food stimulus was 5, 30, 60, or 120 sec. Changes in rate of key pecking during the pre-food stimulus were systematically related to baseline response rate and the duration of the stimulus. Both high and low response rates were increased during the 5-sec stimulus. At longer stimulus durations, low response rates were unaffected and high response rates were decreased during the stimulus. For two of three pigeons, high response rates maintained under a lower frequency of reinforcement tended to be decreased more than high response rates maintained under a higher reinforcement frequency. In general, the magnitude of decrease in high response rates was inversely related to the duration of the pre-food stimulus.     

CONCURRENT RESURGENCE AND BEHAVIORAL HISTORY

The contribution of past experiences to concurrent resurgence was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, resurgence was related to the length of reinforcement history as well as the reinforcement schedule that previously maintained responding. Specifically, more resurgence occurred when key pecks had been reinforced on a variable-interval 1-min schedule than a variable-interval 6-min schedule, but this effect may have been due either to the differential reinforcement rates or differential response rates under the two schedules. When reinforcement rates were similar (Experiment 2), there was more resurgence of high-rate than low-rate responding. When response rates were similar (Experiment 3), resurgence was not related systematically to prior reinforcement rates. Taken together, these three experimental tests of concurrent resurgence illustrate that prior response rates are better predictors of resurgence than are prior reinforcement rates.     

Local rates of responding and reinforcement during concurrent schedules

The literature was searched for information about the local rates of responding and reinforcement during concurrent schedules. The local rates of reinforcement obtained from the two components of a concurrent schedule were equal when a long-duration changeover delay was used and when many sessions were conducted, except when the two components provided different simple schedules. The local rates of responding were equal under some conditions, but they differed when one component provided a ratio and the other an interval schedule. Across schedules, local rates of reinforcement changed with changes in the schedule of reinforcement. Local rates of responding did not change with changes in change-over-delay duration but did with changes in the changeover ratio and with changes in the programmed rates of reinforcement. The results generally conform to the Equalizing and Melioration Principles and help to clarify current statements of the Matching Law. The results also suggest that changes in the local rates of responding and reinforcement may be orderly across schedules.     

A Critical-Mass Theory of National Suicide Rates

Suicide rates in nations of the world from 1970 to 1980 were examined to see whether absolute increases were related to the size of the suicide rates. It was found that nations with higher suicide rates experienced greater increases in their suicide rates. The results are seen as supporting a “critical-mass” theory and are consistent with an explanation in terms of suggestion.     

Larger reward values alone are not enough to entice more cooperation

Two experiments using an iterated prisoner's dilemma game examined under which conditions participants' cooperation rates would either change due to monetary value changes (e.g., 3 cents to 3 dollars) or not change due to numeric value changes (e.g., 3 dollars to 300 cents). A total of 102 university students played the game against a computer that employed one of four strategies across blocks. Results showed high rates of cooperation when participants played against a tit-for-tat strategy and low rates of cooperation against a random strategy. There was no change in cooperation rates due to changes in numeric value alone and a decrease in cooperation rates when large monetary values were at stake. Cooperation rates were higher and cooperation responses slower at earlier stages of the game. I argue that people's ability to strategize plays a key role in the changing rates and speed of cooperative behaviour in the prisoner's dilemma.     

Frequency of cervical and breast cancer screening rates in a multi-ethnic female college sample

This exploratory study examined frequency of self-reported cervical and breast cancer screening rates in a multiethnic sample of 331 female university students. In general, rates of lifetime screening were fairly low, with only 41% reporting having ever had a PAP examination and 44% reporting having undergone at least one clinical breast examination. Screening rates differed by ethnicity. Non-Hispanic White and African-American women had higher screening rates than Asian/Pacific Islander and Latina women. The significantly lower rate of screening among the latter groups is of particular concern given the higher cancer mortality rates typically observed in those groups.     

Time preferences for the very long term

Many important decisions concern outcomes delayed by decades or centuries. Whereas some economists have argued that inter-generational discount rates should be lower than intra-generational rates, three experiments found that inter- and intra-generational discount rates were quite similar. Experiment 1 found that discount rates for long delays (30-900 years) were lower than those for shorter delays (1-30 years) but that, holding delay constant, discount rates for outcomes occurring to future generations were similar to those for outcomes occurring to the present generation. Experiment 2 compared inter-generational discount rates for three different types of outcomes and found similar discount rates for saving lives, improving health, and financial benefits. Experiment 3 found similar inter-generational discounting of life-saving programs that benefit people close to or distant from the decision maker. These studies indicate that the discount rate applied to outcomes occurring to future generations depends on the length of the time delay but not on other factors.     

Explaining cross-state differences in elderly suicide rates and identifying state-level public policy responses that reduce rates

Elderly Americans commit suicide at higher rates than other age groups. We contend that macro- and micro-social variables contribute distinct aspects to explanations of this tragic loss: the former focus on circumstances that affect overall rates, the latter reveal why certain individuals succumb to suicide. Our analysis focuses on the macro-social end of a causal sequence including variables at both levels. We describe how elderly suicide rates vary among states, show that macrosocial indicators of social integration contribute to cross-state variation in elderly suicide rates, and explain how selected aspects of state-level public policy contribute to reducing elderly suicide rates.