Wanted: awareness campaigns on suicide and hearing loss

Two recent articles caught my eye about issues that deserve more play than they get.

First was this Wiretap article about a concert series highlighting suicide prevention: Before All Hope Is Lost. How bad is the problem now? To quote from the article:

“… kids in the United States between the ages of 10 and 24 (are) taking their lives at an alarming rate of one every two hours. The suicide statistics are alarming; the prevention statistics are infuriating. As recently as 2000, the federal government allocated zero dollars to fund suicide prevention programs… We’re talking about a disease that literally takes more lives than homicide and AIDS combined in the U.S.”

More info about this is available at the Take Action tour site. What really gets me furious is that this should be a Red-State no brainer. I mean, why aren’t Republicans on board with this obviously pro-life sentiment? Is it only hip to scream and complain about abortions instead of teenagers taking their own lives?

Another recent push isn’t so much awareness as a step in the right direction. Apple has decided that in the interest of its ever-deafened customer base, they’re adding hearing safeguards for their I-Pods. After all of the recent reports about how users keep their little machines at unsafe volume levels, the company did the right thing to step in and try to help. What they need to do now is to take this further and have awareness campaigns about the dangers of blasting these little devices. Hire a couple of music celebs- it’ll be good for their image and the company’s image too and get the word out much quicker.