Vote Democratic to Prevent Suicides and Violent Deaths {{NY Research Findings}}
The U.S. midterm elections are just 3 weeks from today, and if you're looking for some evidence-based suggestions on who to vote for to prevent suicides and killings, a study out last week might have some answers.
Or one answer, anyway: Vote for a Democrat.
Here's what a group of researchers at Yale and New York University led by Bandy Lee, MD, found when they analyzed homicide rates, suicide rates, and who controlled the White House from 1900 until 2010: "Violent deaths were associated with an increase under Republican presidents and a decrease under Democratic presidents, were higher in states that vote for Republican than for Democratic presidential candidates, and increased alongside increasing unemployment and falling national [gross domestic product] GDP."
The differences were small, on the order of an extra homicide per few hundred thousand people per year -- give or take the size of a congressional district -- in a Republican administration, and a similar drop during Democratic administrations. The suicide figures were slightly higher (and lower), but both, should be noted, included significant variation (i.e., standard deviations that were larger than the means).
There were some other important correlations, of course, as the authors note in Aggression and Violent Behavior: "[W]hen a U.S. president of a conservative (Republican) party was in power, the unemployment rates were significantly higher and there was a reduction in growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita."
Still, "Adjusting for unemployment and GDP reduced but did not eliminate party effect." And: "Suicide and homicide rates were higher in states that voted for the Republican candidate for president than in states that voted for the Democratic candidate."
The authors point to two exceptions -- Republican Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat Jimmy Carter -- and say they reveal "that the party label of the president alone is not always a determinant, but perhaps the social and economic values, attitudes, and policies that he supports and that are also supported by the majority of the American public who voted for him."
That means your choices at the voting booth remain, in a word, complex.
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