Americans Obsessed with Killing & Death

As I said recently in The Health Gazette...

While every nation must face the tragic realities of homicides and suicides there is no doubt that the US has some serious issues to face in these areas. These data strongly suggest some significant problems in and affecting the American population. It may be helpful for bureaucrats to count the events and to nicely tabulate the data and to talk of dealing with it as part of the "public health agenda" but who are they kidding? This is a very serious problem and it is time, surely, for some serious self-examination, diagnoses and effective treatments. The following report is from the CDC.

I was referring to a recent report on homicide and suicide rates in the US released by the CDC. It begins like this.

Violent deaths claimed 49,639 lives in the United States during 2003, and the prevention of violent deaths is an integral part of the public health agenda (1). In 2003, CDC launched the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) to provide detailed information on the circumstances of violent deaths. The system can be used to develop and evaluate prevention policies, programs, and strategies at the national, state, and local levels (2). This report describes the analysis of violent deaths from seven states that participated in NVDRS in 2003, plus six additional states that participated in 2004.

Homicide circumstance information revealed that most victims knew the suspects involved and that intimate partner conflicts continued to be among the most important contributing factors. Suicide circumstance information indicated that mental health disorders and intimate partner problems had important roles. These findings underscore the value of NVDRS data for effective planning and targeting of violence-prevention programs.

The report goes on with the following remarks. Frankly, they just as worrying as the death rates. Why? Because they are so cold, dispassionate, bureaucratic, scientific. These people are talkin about homicides and suicides of staggering incidences yet they hide withing their emotionless world making it appear that something is being done. In truth, there is scant evidence that any initiative or program yet instituted has done any good at all in dealing with this dark side of the American psyche.

NVDRS is an active, state-based surveillance system that collects information on homicides, suicides, deaths of undetermined intent (i.e., those for which available information is insufficient to enable a medical or legal authority to make a distinction among unintentional injury, self-harm, or assault*), deaths from legal intervention (e.g., involving a person killed by an on-duty police officer), and unintentional firearm deaths. Seven states provided data in 2003 (Alaska, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia), and six additional states contributed in 2004 (Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin). NVDRS uses a multisource approach (i.e., death certificates, coroner/medical examiner reports, law enforcement records, and crime laboratory data) for analysis of violent deaths.

Using information from all of these sources, data abstractors in each state assign a manner of death (i.e., suicide, homicide, unintentional firearm deaths, legal interventions, and undetermined deaths) to each case. NVDRS also collects the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) code for underlying cause of death (UCOD), circumstances contributing to the death, and characteristics of the death, including victim-suspect relationship and victim toxicology results. The UCOD is categorized as suicide or homicide using standard definitions from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) (3--5).

You can read the report on the Health Gazette via the link above if you wish. Can someone please explain what this American obsession with killing and death is all about?