Why is suicide on the rise in the US – but falling in most of Europe?

Steven Stack
The Conversation
Originally published June 28, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

There is evidence that rising suicide rates are associated with a weakening of the social norms regarding mutual aid and support.

In one study on suicide in the U.S., the rising rates were closely linked with reductions in social welfare spending between 1960 and 1995. Social welfare expenditures include Medicaid, a medical assistance program for low income persons; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children; the Supplemental Security Income program for the blind, disabled and elderly; children’s services including adoption, foster care and day care; shelters; and funding of public hospitals for medical assistance other than Medicaid.

Later studies found a similar relationship between suicide and social welfare for the U.S. in the 1980s and between 1990 and 2000, as well as for nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Economic Development.

When it comes to spending on social welfare, the U.S. is at the low end of the spectrum relative to Western Europe. For example, only 18.8 percent of the U.S. GDP is spent on social welfare, while most of the OECD nations spend at least 25 percent of their GDP. Our rates of suicide are increasing while their rates fall.

The information is here.

Europe’s biggest research fund cracks down on ‘ethics dumping’

Linda Nordling
Nature.com
Originally posted July 3, 2018

Ethics dumping — doing research deemed unethical in a scientist’s home country in a foreign setting with laxer ethical rules — will be rooted out in research funded by the European Union, officials announced last week.

Applications to the EU’s €80-billion (US$93-billion) Horizon 2020 research fund will face fresh levels of scrutiny to make sure that research practices deemed unethical in Europe are not exported to other parts of the world. Wolfgang Burtscher, the European Commission’s deputy director-general for research, made the announcement at the European Parliament in Brussels on 29 June.

Burtscher said that a new code of conduct developed to curb ethics dumping will soon be applied to all EU-funded research projects. That means applicants will be referred to the code when they submit their proposals, and ethics committees will use the document when considering grant applications.

The information is here.

Research suggests morality can survive without religion

By Brooks Hays
UPI
Originally posted January 13, 2016

Results from a longitudinal survey suggest morality hasn't declined with the decline of organized religion. The findings were published in the journal Politics and Religion.

"Religion has been in sharp decline in many European countries," study author Ingrid Storm, a researcher at Manchester University, said in a press release. "Each new generation is less religious than the one before, so I was interested to find out if there is any reason to expect moral decline."

Between 1981 to 2008, respondents from 48 European nations shared their attitudes toward a variety of moral and cultural transgressions.

In analyzing the responses, Storm differentiated between two types of moral offenses. The first category encompasses behavior that offends tradition or cultural norms, such as abortion or homosexuality. The second category includes crimes against the state and those harmful to others -- lying, cheating, stealing.

The article is here.