(warning: rant alert!)...
things like this have always happened, but if there's an increase it's because of the fact that there are just more people in the world.
and along with that, i believe it is often caused by a combination of 2 things:
1) testosterone poisoning of males (what you said about 'something in the meat', glitch.. may not be too far off. which is why i only eat free-range, HORMONE-FREE meat & dairy products...)
2) and also the overwhelming stress of modern life... everyone it seems now is a slave to debt.. they gotta have the 2.5 children and the house they can't afford, and jobs don't pay crap anymore so people have a harder time keeping up and coping with the pressures and expenses. extended families are all broken up or estranged and there is often little to no familial help or support. most modern jobs just suck. trafifc sucks, there is too much overcrowding (see the part about everyone wanting to have 2.5 kids-- or, more). the economy sucks, this stupid administration sucks, this stupid war sucks, taxes suck, many people are on drugs (legal or illegal) which also sucks, everything involves too much red tape and beauracracy.. and everything is tele-recorded and it's impossible to get a hold of a real human being anymore. and even if you can, chances are they're in india & you can't understand what the !@#$* they're saying.
on top of that, relationships are difficult.. and this is often what sends people over the edge. i also think these are the first few generations that have grown up raised on TV, while their moms were doing housework or working or whatever, and there has been too much violence and overstimulation and not enough real-life socialization. so kids now learn at an early age that everything gets solved with violence, and oftentimes boys/men don't learn how to treat women very well. in other words kids don't grow up seeing a lot of healthy relationships, so they have nothing to go by. also lots of divorces. then again, there's always been unhealthy relationships.. and it's not like getting divorced is worse than staying together and being miserable and tormenting your kid. but,, the thing that makes it different is that in many ways life is tougher now. things were simpler in the past, not necessarily easier, just simpler. so the increase in complexity & difficulty is what causes too much strain on modern relationships, often to the breaking point.
i envy the generation that got to live their childhood, teenage years & early life in the post-WW2 years.. that must have been a great time to grow up. a lot of people from that era seem to have this certain optimism, and i have seen so many couples who married around that time who had a good life, lived in good homes (and many times stayed in the same home they bought then, for the rest of their lives. very unlike today!), had good steady jobs, and stayed together happily until old age. things were modern enough and there were enough advancements in health and medicine to keep people healthy, the govt. seemed to be a lot more on the side of the people (think FDR-- social security, WPA/PWA/CCC etc).. and yet there was that pre-computer era simplicity and serenity.. things weren't as crowded, pollution hadn't done as much damage, development had not yet overdeveloped and small towns were not yet spoiled by overbuilding of highways and endless traffic. now all this has reversed, and on top of that, it seems like our own govt is more & more the enemy every day.. in the early days of our country everyone had a chance to be successful depending on your ingenuity and how hard you work. now it seems our system is geared to make us all cogs in a huge machine that is out of our control... and it is so much harder to be successful unless you are already rich and have endless capital. immigrants who come here still fall for that "american dream" myth but when they get here they don't realize, there may be more opportunities & a higher standard of life here.. but it is also very difficult and competitive now... and the increase in the rich/poor gap is growing every day. which baffles me,, because that was suposed to be the whole premise of ths founding of this country. to avoid the class system.. and here we are right back in it, more than ever!
overall, it is more clear to me every day how the 1880s- 1950's were definitely the golden era of the US.
and i don't mean to be 100% idealistic and nostaligic about the recent past... in some ways we have it better now, and in some ways they had it worse then. so yeah, i know that. my point is what is making things to complicated and difficult now to make so many people snap and do thing like kill their families and themselves.............????
