NEW YORK TIMES
U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High
APRIL
22, 2016
WASHINGTON
— Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30
years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group
except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also
substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from
a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.
The
suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over
the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range,
the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24
percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health
Statistics, which released the study on Friday.
The
increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13
per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year
starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In
all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.
A
Growing, Widespread Toll
From
1999 to 2014, suicide rates in the United States rose among most age groups.
Men and women from 45 to 64 had a sharp increase. Rates fell among those age 75
and older.
“It’s
really stunning to see such a large increase in suicide rates affecting
virtually every age group,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser for health
care at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who has identified a
link between suicides in middle age and rising rates of distress
about jobs and personal finances.
Researchers
also found an alarming increase among girls 10 to 14, whose suicide rate, while
still very low, had tripled. The number of girls who killed themselves rose to
150 in 2014 from 50 in 1999. “This one certainly jumped out,” said Sally
Curtin, a statistician at the center and an author of the report.
What
to Do If You Need Help
We
have been getting an overwhelming response to this article and wanted to add a
few things. The National Institute of Mental Health
recommends this site. It also warns that reporting on
suicide can lead to so-called suicide contagion, in which exposure
to the mention of suicide within a person’s family, peer group or in the media
can lead to an increase in suicides.
There
are many groups that help people having suicidal
thoughts. One, Crisis Text Line, inspired by teenagers’ attachment to texting
but open to people of all ages, provides free assistance to anyone who texts
“help” to 741
If
you prefer to talk on the phone, N.I.H. recommends the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
American
Indians had the sharpest rise of all racial and ethnic groups, with rates
rising by 89 percent for women and 38 percent for men. White middle-aged women
had an increase of 80 percent.
The
rate declined for just one racial group: black men. And it declined for only
one age group: men and women over 75.
The
data analysis provided fresh evidence of suffering among white Americans.
Recent research has highlighted the plight of less educated whites,
showing surges in deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, liver disease and alcohol poisoning, particularly
among those with a high school education or less. The new report did not break
down suicide rates by education, but researchers who reviewed the analysis said
the patterns in age and race were consistent with that recent research and
painted a picture of desperation for many in American society.
“This is part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of
the links between poverty, hopelessness and health,” said Robert D. Putnam, a
professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of “Our Kids,” an
investigation of new class divisions in America.
The
rise in suicide rates has happened slowly over many years. Federal health
researchers said they chose 1999 as the start of the period they studied
because it was a low point in the national suicide rate and they wanted to
cover the full period of its recent sustained rise.
The
federal health agency’s last major report on suicide, released in 2013, noted a sharp increase in suicide among 35- to 64-year-olds.
But the rates have risen even more since then — up by 7 percent for the entire
population since 2010, the end of the last study period — and federal researchers
said they issued the new report to draw attention to the issue.
Policy
makers say efforts to prevent suicide across the country are spotty. While some
hospitals and health systems screen for suicidal thinking and operate good
treatment programs, many do not.
“We
have more and more effective treatments, but we have to figure out how to bake them into health care systems so they are used more automatically,”
said Dr. Jane Pearson, chairwoman of the National Institute of Mental Health’s
Suicide Research Consortium, which oversees the National Institutes of Health
funding for suicide prevention research. “We’ve got bits and pieces, but we
haven’t really put them all together yet.”
She
noted that while N.I.H. funding for suicide prevention projects had been
relatively flat — rising to $25 million in 2016 from $22 million in 2012 — it
was a small fraction of funding for research of mental illnesses, including
mood disorders like depression.
The
new federal analysis noted that the methods of suicide were changing. About one
in four suicides in 2014 involved suffocation, which includes hanging and
strangulation, compared with fewer than one in five in 1999. Suffocation deaths
are harder to prevent because nearly anyone has access to the means, Ms.
Hempstead said. And while the share of suicides involving guns declined — guns
went from being involved in 37 percent of female suicides to 31 percent, and
from 62 percent to 55 percent for men — the total number of gun suicides
increased.
The
question of what has driven the increases is unresolved, leaving experts to
muse on the reasons.
Julie
Phillips, a professor of sociology at Rutgers who has studied suicide among
middle-aged Americans, said social changes could be raising the risks. Marriage
rates have declined, particularly among less educated Americans, while divorce
rates have risen, leading to increased
social isolation, she said. She calculated that in 2005, unmarried middle-aged men were 3.5
times more likely than married men to die from suicide, and their
female counterparts were as much as 2.8 times more likely to kill themselves.
The divorce rate has doubled for middle-aged and older adults since the 1990s,
she said.
Disappointed
expectations of social and economic well-being among less educated white men
from the baby-boom generation may also be playing a role, she said. They grew
up in an era that valued “masculinity and self-reliance” — characteristics that
could get in the way of asking for help.
“It
appears this group isn’t seeking help but rather turning to self-destructive
means of dealing with their despair,” Professor Phillips said.
Another
possible explanation: an economy that has eaten away at the prospects of
families on the lower rungs of the income ladder.
Dr.
Alex Crosby, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, said he had studied the
association between economic downturns and suicide going back to the 1920s and
found that suicide was highest when the economy was weak. One of the highest
rates in the country’s modern history, he said, was in 1932, during the Great Depression, when the rate was 22.1 per
100,000, about 70 percent higher than in 2014.
“There
was a consistent pattern,” he said, which held for all ages between 25 and 64.
“When the economy got worse, suicides went up, and when it got better, they
went down.”
But
other experts pointed out that the unemployment rate had been declining in the
latter period of the study, and questioned how important the economy was to
suicide.
The
gap in suicide rates for men and women has narrowed because women’s rates are
increasing faster than men’s. But men still kill themselves at a rate 3.6 times
that of women. Though suicide rates for older adults fell over the period of
the study, men over 75 still have the highest suicide rate of any age group —
38.8 per 100,000 in 2014, compared with just four per 100,000 for their female
counterparts.
No comments:
Post a Comment