Washington’s Blog
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013
Suicide rates are tied to the
economy.
The Boston Globe reported
in 2011:
A new report issued today by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the overall suicide rate
rises and falls with the state of the economy — dating all the way back to the
Great
Depression.
The report, published in the American
Journal of Public Health, found that suicide rates increased in
times of economic crisis: the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New
Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession
(1980-1982). Those rates tended to fall during strong economic times — with
fast growth and low unemployment — like right after World War II and during the
1990s.
During the depths of the Great
Depression, suicide rates in America significantly increased. As the Globe
notes:
The largest increase in the US
suicide rate occurred during the Great Depression surging from 18 in 100,000 up
to 22 in 100,000 …
We’ve previously pointed out that
suicide rates have skyrocketed recently:
The number of deaths by suicide
has also
surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in
suicides to
the downturn in the economy. Around 35,000
Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die
by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is
astronomical and under-reported).
So you’re2,059
times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist.
NBC News reported
in March:
Suicide rates are up alarmingly
among middle-aged Americans, according to the latest federal government
statistics.
They show a 28 percent rise in
suicide rates for people aged 35 to 64 between 1999 and 2010.
RT reports:
In a letter to The Lancet medical
journal, scientists from Britain, Hong Kong and United States said an analysis
of data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that while
suicide rates increased slowly between 1999 and 2007, the rate of increase more
than quadrupled from 2008 to 2010, Reuters reported.
Earlier this month, NY Daily
News wrote:
The Great Recession may have been at
the root of a great depression that caused suicides to soar among middle-aged
Americans, a government report speculates.
The annual suicide rate for adults
ages 35 to 64 spiked in the past decade, according to a study from the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And a shaky economy that nose-dived
into the worst financial crisis since the Depression may be the biggest reason
why.
***
The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report said the annual suicide rate jumped 28.4% from 1999-2010.
It was the biggest increase of any
age group, said the CDC, citing “the recent economic downturn” as one of the
“possible contributing factors” for the increase.
“Historically, suicide rates tend to
correlate with business cycles, with higher rates observed during times of
economic hardship,” the report said.
David Stuckler (a senior research
leader in sociology at Oxford), and Sanjay Basu (an assistant professor of
medicine and an epidemiologist in the Prevention Research Center at
Stanford), write in
the New York Times:
The correlation between unemployment
and suicide has been observed since the 19th century.
(And see these articles by the Wall
Street Journal and the Los
Angeles Times. This is obviously true world-wide.
For example, last year the New York Times reported:
The economic downturn that has
shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of
once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in
the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners
and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some
European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”
In Greece, the suicide rate among
men increased more than 24 percent from 2007 to 2009, government statistics
show. In Ireland during the same period, suicides among men rose more than 16
percent. In Italy, suicides motivated by economic difficulties have increased
52 percent, to 187 in
2010 — the most recent year for which statistics were
available — from 123 in 2005.)
Indeed, more Americans are killing
themselves today than during the Great Depression. Specifically, there were
were 123 million
Americans in 1930. The maximum suicide rate during the depths of the
Great Depression was 22
out of 100,000 Americans. That means that up to 27,060
Americans killed themselves each year.
In contrast, the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control reports that 38,364
Americans committed suicide in 2010. In other words, 2010 suicides were
approximately 142%
of suicides during the depths of the Great Depression. (The suicide rate
is lower today than during the Great Depression, but – given that there aremore
Americans – there are more suicides each year.)
The head of my local county’s mental
health services confirmed to me today that there are now more suicides now than
during the Great Depression.
The
Root Causes: Unemployment and Foreclosure
Why do more people kill themselves
during severe downturns? It’s not just a downturn in the business cycle
in some general sense. It’s more specific than that.
Unemployment and foreclosure are the largest triggers
in increased suicide risk.
David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu write:
People looking for work are about
twice as likely to end their lives as those who have jobs.
***
Unemployment is a leading cause of
depression, anxiety, alcoholism and suicidal thinking.
ABC News points out:
“Joblessness is a risk factor for
suicide,” said Nadine Kaslow, professor of psychology in the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. “The stress
is just overwhelming. … People are freaked out.”
Bloomberg reports:
“The suicide rate started
accelerating in 2008, 2009 and 2010 — someone might still be working, but their
house is underwater, or they’re working but they’re working part-time,” Eric
Caine, the director of the CDC’s Injury Control Research
Center for Suicide Prevention, said by telephone. “These things
ripple into families. There’s an economic stress.”
NY Daily News writes:
“Most people who commit suicide tend
to suffer from major depression, and this vulnerability tends to be brought
forth by very stressful situations like losing one’s home or job,” [Dr. Dan
Iosifescu, director of mood and anxiety disorders program at Mount Sinai
Hospita] said.
NBC News reports:
The American Association for Suicidology says
economic recessions don’t normally affect suicide rates.
“Although US suicide rates did
increase slightly during the years of the Great Depression, reaching a peak
rate of 17.4/100,000 in 1933, subsequent US recessions have not been found to
lead to increased national rates of suicide in the period of or immediately
following each recession,” the group says.
The latest numbers suggest suicide
rates for middle-aged Americans now surpass the peak during the Depression. And
there’s another possible explanation.
“There is a clear and direct
relationship between rates of unemployment and suicide,” the suicidology group
says in its statement.
“The peak rate of suicide in 1933
occurred one year after the total US unemployment rate reached 25 percent of
the labor force. Similar findings have been documented internationally. At the
individual level, unemployed individuals have between two and four times the
suicide rate of those employed.”
The group also raises concern about
the home foreclosure rate.
Indeed, it is likely that more
people have lost their jobs during this “Great Recession” than
during the
Great Depression … especially when you look at the masses
of people who have given up altogether and dropped out of the work force.
And it is possible that more people have lost their homes through foreclosure
than during the Great Depression as well.
No wonder there are so many suicides
…
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