From 2001 to 2011, there were 70,974 hospitalizations related to firearms, and as it turns out, stock market performance seems to hold a strong correlation to injuries, accidents, suicides and murders. The author of the stock market study published in The American Journal of Medicine, Dr. Shikhar Agarwal, from the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, says that economic uneasiness could be a root cause of firearm-related injuries and deaths. Dr. Agarwal said that when the statistics are broken down further, we see an increase in firearm hospitalizations during the period between 2002 and 2004, then the rates declined until 2008. In 2009 and 2010, there was a sharp increase in firearm-related hospitalizations.
“One could surmise that there would be a relationship between the national economic situation and national firearm-related hospitalization rates,” Dr. Agarwal said, according to Medical News Today. Agarwal used data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, and compared the data with the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The percentage of fatalities involved with firearm related hospitalizations has remained steady regardless of stock market performance. About eight percent of all the firearm related injuries were fatal, and 30 percent of those fatalities could be attributed to suicides.
Incidentally, Agarwal’s study also found that mental health disorders among those hospitalized in the data set increased.
Last year, Dr. Agarwal studied another aspect of economics and hospitalization. Again using the NIS database, Agarwal compared people in the lowest-income neighborhoods to those in the highest-income neighborhoods and examined how likely each was to receive life saving and timely treatment with angioplasty and stenting once they have suffered from a heart attack. Perhaps equally as unsurprising to many as the findings of the current research into the stock market and firearm-related hospitalizations, people who suffered heart attacks in poor neighborhoods had an 11 percent higher death rate during hospitalizations, and were significantly less likely to get the treatment they needed.
“It is unfortunate that this socioeconomic divide exists in how patients are treated for a life-threatening condition,” Dr. Agarwal, said, according to an article published on the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention’s website. “We all need to brainstorm how it can be avoided. Every patient has the right to the best possible care, regardless of socioeconomic status.”
Earlier this month, Inquisitr writer Tara Dodrill wrote about a representative in Connecticut trying to appeal to people’s economic needs in order to get them to turn in certain firearms by re-introducing the Support Assault Firearm Elimination and Education for our Streets Act (SAFER) which would grant up to a 2,000 dollar tax credit to anyone who turns in their semi-automatic rifles to their local police station.
Tell us what you think by responding in the comments area near the bottom of the page. Is it any surprise to you that, when the stock market falls and the U.S. economy falters, gun-related hospitalizations go up?
Firearm Hospitalizations Correlate With Stock Market, Nearly One-Third Of The Associated Fatalities Are Suicides is an article from: The Inquisitr News
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