Posted: Apr 21, 2010 2:21 am
The odd thing about suicide is that some studies show it is also seasonal with peaks in the summer/high daylight hours times. We've also see trends down since the '70s (or here) in the UK (whilst Church attendance has gone down too).
The one thing that people probably ignore is that in the past 100 years whilst secularism has risen in the UK, infant mortality rates have plummeted from 140 per 1000 to 6 per 1000 and life expectancy has near doubled. Given that suicide in the UK is on average of just over 11 per 100,000 and falling then I think secular society is doing well, people not only have a greater chance of living to start with they are living longer.
So many ways of spinning these statistics, they'll make you go mad.
The one thing that people probably ignore is that in the past 100 years whilst secularism has risen in the UK, infant mortality rates have plummeted from 140 per 1000 to 6 per 1000 and life expectancy has near doubled. Given that suicide in the UK is on average of just over 11 per 100,000 and falling then I think secular society is doing well, people not only have a greater chance of living to start with they are living longer.
So many ways of spinning these statistics, they'll make you go mad.