Note: While the information below suggests that certain activities may help a person who is struggling with mental illness, this should not take the place of seeing a professional therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. If you are seriously considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline immediately.
If you’re trying to save lives, why would you recommend extreme sports?
– Many people’s thoughts, probably
While it does seem counter intuitive to say a person might live longer if they participated in extreme sports, consider the following data from the last few years regarding causes of death among people in the US:
| Annual Fatality Percentage | Cause of Death | Related Total | Number of Fatalities |
| 0.4% per BASE jumper | BASE Jumping | Estimated < 5,000 BASE jumpers (2012) | 20 (2011) |
| 0.35% per adult with SMI | Suicide (SMI) | 13.1 million adults with serious mental illness (2019) | 45,861 adult suicides (2019) |
| 0.13% per paraglider pilot | Paragliding | ~4,600 USHPA paraglider pilots (2017) | 6 (2017) |
| 0.09% per adult with AMI | Suicide (AMI) | 51.5 million adults with any mental illness (2019) | 45,861 adult suicides (2019) |
| ~0.06% per motorcycle rider (assumes bike per rider) | Motorcycle | 8.6 million registered motorcycles (2019) | 5,014 (2019) |
| 0.04% per skydiver | Skydiving | 40,706 USPA sky divers (2019) | 15 (2019) |
| 0.03% per hang glider pilot | Hang Gliding | ~3,900 USHPA hang glider pilots (2017) | 1 (2017) |
| < 0.003% per active SCUBA diver | SCUBA Diving | around 2.7 million active US divers (2019) (Unknown Canadian) | 70 US/Canadian divers (2019) |
| 0.00008% per ski resort visit | Skiing/Snowboarding | 51.3 million ski resort visits (2019-2020) | 42 (2019-2020) |
Annual Suicide and Extreme Sport Fatality Rate Comparison
As you can see, if an adult has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness (SMI), the chance of them committing suicide is higher than the chance of dying due to participating in almost any popular extreme sport. The only case in which the fatality rate is higher (very roughly-estimated data) is as an active BASE jumper, which is currently one of the most (if not the most) dangerous extreme sports in the world (note that the per-jump fatality rate of BASE jumping is estimated to be around 0.04%). Along these same lines, a person with any mental illness is more than twice as likely to commit suicide than an active skydiver is to die jumping out of planes.
So, if there is any chance that a person with a mental illness, especially a serious one, might find their life to be more worth living after experiencing an extreme sport, doesn’t it make sense that they should try? There is also the camaraderie and support they are likely to receive as part of the associated communities to take into consideration.
Stories
While there are undoubtedly countless untold stories of people who found extreme sports beneficial to their outlook on life, here are a few examples of stories that are online:
- “How Sky Diving Cured My Depression” – Jared Lindzon (4/13/2018)
- Follow-Up story (8/12/2019)
- “Skydiving Helped Me Battle Depression” – Matt (8/29/2017)