Re: Suicide rates/availability heuristic

[Drnanjo]

This may be more like a spurious correlation. My understanding is that in
general, divorced/widowed/unemployed middle aged and elderly men have the
highest suicide rates.  Maybe dentists are somehow overrepresented...?

Another interesting misconception is that teens have the highest suicide rate
of all age groups (they do not despite a slight increase recently.) It's a
nice way to teach the "availability heuristic" by asking the students what
teens are most likely to die of (the actual answer is accidents, which is the
chief cause of death for Americans 1 - 40 years old.) Then show them some
current mortality stats.

Nancy Melucci
LACCD