Great Depression Suicide

Jumping off buildings, falling to your death, because you think your life is over from the collapse of the stock market. This is what the Great Depression is widely recognized for: crashing stock market, thousands of suicides and how quickly poverty spread across the nation. On October 29, 1929, which is commonly known as the black Tuesday, 40 percent of paper values decreased dramatically (Nelson). The period that followed from 1929 to 1945 was known as the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and money when the stock market crashed. The Great Depression is one of the most devastating experiences of mass hysteria in America. This upsetting event in American history affected everyone. The effects hit everyone in America …show more content…
According to “Suicides during the Great Depression in the United States, Canada and Europe”, there were at least ten thousand recorded suicides during the Great Depression. There were people jumping out buildings to their death. It was a sad time in American history with the amount of people who took their own lives and those who could not survive in the terrible living conditions that were left after the panic. There were makeshift shanty towns called Hooverville. Hoovervilles were tattered communities of the homeless, coalesced in and around every major city in the country (Watkins 59). There were about three million kids who were not going to school anymore because of the depression. Many of the children would beg for food or money to help their families. Most of the panic found in the Great Depression was centered on the closings of all the banks in the …show more content…
When millions of people realized they wanted their money out if the banks and the banks could not compensate for the excess amount of people trying to withdraw their money that would upset the balance they were forced to close the banks. With the banks closed this caused a great panic. Millions of people became scared and the panic set in. When the banks closed there were thousands of people who felt that everything was going to fall apart. The banks faced many publicly on the closings and not having the ability to give the people of America their money. The imbalance of more people withdrawing their money out, than people keeping their money caused the banks to shut down and this cost the people of America thousands and thousands of dollars. The banks shutting down were the last straw when the panic set off. The banks and government closed for a few days. The closings sent many people into breakdowns. As the banks got worse the government decided to step in and try to help the people and the