• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home National

‘Deaths of Despair:’ Why Are US Suicides on the Rise?

Alex Graf by Alex Graf
10/28/19
in National
‘Deaths of Despair:’ Why Are US Suicides on the Rise?

A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Among teenagers in the U.S., suicide is the second leading cause of death. Earlier this month, the CDC released a report showing a 56 percent increase in suicides among those aged 10 to 24 between 2007 and 2017. 

But the wide range of factors that increase the risk of suicide make pinning down a single cause or solution difficult. 

Preventing Suicide

Though the CDC report focuses on suicide among children and young adults, other data from the CDC indicates suicide is on the rise among every other age group as well. 

“Research has shown that there are multiple intersecting factors that contribute to suicide and this is one of the things that we really try to emphasize is that suicide is complex and there are a number of different factors,” CDC Behavior Scientist Asha Ivey-Stephenson told The Globe Post.

“So one of the things that we do is … we put together strategies based on the best available evidence with what is shown to work to prevent suicide.”

The CDC currently recommends seven strategies for suicide prevention, which are outlined in the graphic below and range from actions at an individual level to public policy at every level of government.

Source: CDC Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policy, Programs, and Practices

13 years ago, Desiree Woodland lost her 24-year-old son to suicide. Nine months prior to his death, Woodland’s son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia but she thought he was getting treatment and improving. That was tragically not the case. 

“I taught sixth-grade social studies and did a wonderful lesson with my kids and came back home and I found my son,” Woodland told The Globe Post. “He left lots of notebooks and journals of his feelings and ways he was going to take his life. I mean. … this was such a shock to me.”

Mental illness and suicide are often misunderstood and stigmatized. In the years since her son’s death, Woodland founded a non-profit, Breaking the Silence, which holds events at schools in New Mexico to teach students about how to talk about mental illness and suicide and show them that being mentally ill or having suicidal thoughts is not something to hide or be ashamed of.

“You have to do something with your pain,” Woodland said. “I felt like the most proactive thing that we could do is to go into schools and teach middle school and high school students about mental illness and give them the language to talk about their feelings about depression and anxiety.”

‘Deaths of Despair’


Economic pressures on families in poverty-stricken communities play a notable role in higher suicide rates. A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found children living in U.S. counties with the highest poverty rates are nearly 40 percent more likely to die from suicide.

“The idea of ‘deaths of despair’ seems to capture some of that,”  Forensic and Clinical Psychologist Aaron Kivisto told The Globe Post.

“Kids and adults growing up in these communities where some are being ravaged by substance abuse problems, plenty are being hit with economic issues that are impacting families, and certainly when the despair goes up like that, we’re seeing suicides increase really across all age groups.”


The CDC acknowledges economic strain can increase the risk of suicide and includes strengthening economic supports among one the seven strategies they suggest to prevent suicide.

“Economic and financial strains such as job loss, unemployment, and reduced income are things that may increase the risk of suicide,” Ivey-Stephenson said, adding that state assistance programs to reduce financial insecurity can be an effective means of limiting suicide risks.  

Firearms Access 

The mentally ill are often a scapegoat for mass shootings like those in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio from earlier this year. While mass shootings frequently dominate headlines, the majority of gun-related deaths come not from homicide or episodes of mass violence, but suicide.

Both Presidents Donald Trump and Barrack Obama have attributed mass shootings in part to mental illness, even though research indicates the link between serious mental illness and violence against others is weak. 

There is, however, a strong correlation between mental illness and rates of suicide, according to a Psychiatric Services study that found people with a serious mental illness are 20 times more likely to commit suicide compared to the general population.

According to one study by Mathew Miller published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, even though firearms account for only 5 percent of all deliberate self-harm episodes, half of the roughly 100 suicides in the U.S. each day are attributable to firearms.

Of suicide attempts using firearms, 90 percent are fatal, making firearms by far the most lethal means of suicide.

“Accessibility to firearms is always going to be one of those top priority issues in terms of understanding what’s happening and particularly how some of these kids getting their hands on firearms to do these sorts of things,” Kivisto said. 

“What we know from a lot of data that’s come before is that the completion rate of suicides using firearms is exponentially higher than suicide attempts with other means.”

A meta-analysis of several studies and articles found access to firearms is associated with risk for suicides. Some states, like Indiana, have been successful in reducing the number of suicides by reducing access to firearms.

Indiana which has had a “red flag” law on the books since 2005 has significantly reduced suicide rates according to a study that found a 7.5 percent reduction in firearm suicides in the 10 years following the enactment of the law.

Red flag laws allow courts to issue a special protection order which police can use to temporarily confiscate firearms from individuals a judge considers to be an immediate danger to themselves or others. 

“The most prominent policy solution at this point in time tends to be what are informally known as red flag laws or these risk-based gun seizure laws,” Kivisto said. “

They fill a number of gaps in addressing suicide. Oftentimes they come to be as a result of concerns about mass homicide. In practice, we know … that a large majority of the seizures are occurring actually because somebody is perceived to be at risk for suicide.”

Another study found even something as simple as keeping guns safely stored, unloaded, and with locking devices, could prevent as much as one-third of all firearm suicides and accidental firearm deaths. Currently, only a few states have laws requiring gun owners to store their firearms in such a manner.

While firearms are the most deadly means of suicide and one of the CDC’s recommendations is to reduce access to lethal means of suicide, Ivey-Stephenson emphasized firearms are only a part of that picture and said medications and other products also fall under that classification.

If you or someone you know are struggling with mental illness, consider calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255


More on the Subject 

Focusing on Mental Illness Won’t Solve America’s Gun Violence Problem: Experts

ShareTweet
Alex Graf

Alex Graf

Keep up with his latest writing on climate, water, healthcare and more by following him on twitter @mjcabooseman

Related Posts

A demonstrator sprays paint over an upside-down portrait of Chinese leader Xi Jinping
World

China Use of Psychiatric Hospitals to Punish Activists ‘Widespread:’ Report

by Staff Writer
August 17, 2022
Half a million Americans died in overdoses from both prescription and illegal opioids between 1999 and 2018.
National

McKinsey Reaches $573M Settlement Over Opioid Crisis

by Staff Writer
February 4, 2021
A casket is delivered to a funeral home in Brooklyn on April 23, 2020.
National

Nearly 300K Excess US Deaths Since January, Most From Virus: CDC

by Staff Writer
October 21, 2020
Medical workers test a patient for COVID-19 in San Francisco, California on March 12, 2020. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP.
Opinion

The CDC Needs to Be Independent Like the Federal Reserve

by Amitrajeet A. Batabyal
August 4, 2020
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), attends a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on "COVID-19 Response" on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 4, 2020.
Opinion

An Unforgiving Virus and the Silent CDC

by Richard P. Wenzel
July 28, 2020
Guns in the united States
National

Focusing on Mental Illness Won’t Solve America’s Gun Violence Problem: Experts

by Alex Graf
October 7, 2019
Next Post
Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush

Selective Empathy is Far Worse than No Empathy at All

Outrage at Johnson’s Rhetoric in Brexit Impasse

UK Set for Third Election in Four Years to Try to Break Brexit Gridlock

Recommended

An AFP journalist views an example of a "deepfake" video manipulated using artificial intelligence.

Deepfake ‘News Anchors’ in Pro-China Footage: Research

February 8, 2023
Syrian rescuers and civilians search for victims and survivors amid the rubble of a collapsed building, in the rebel-held northern countryside of Syria's Idlib province on the border with Turkey, early on February 6, 2023. Syrian rescuers (White Helmets) and civilians search for victims and survivors amid the rubble of a collapsed building

Quake Kills Over 1,200 Across Turkey, Syria

February 6, 2023
Protesters rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, outside of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023

How Do Violent ‘Monsters’ Take Root?

February 3, 2023
A supporter of nurses' strike and NHS holds a placard

UK Faces Fresh Mass Strikes as Wage Talks Derail

February 1, 2023
Israeli security forces in Jerusalem

Palestinian Gunman Kills 7 in East Jerusalem Synagogue Attack

January 30, 2023
The Doomsday Clock reads 100 seconds to midnight, a decision made by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, during an announcement at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on January 23, 2020

‘Doomsday Clock’ Moves Closest Ever to Midnight

January 25, 2023

Opinion

Protesters rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, outside of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023

How Do Violent ‘Monsters’ Take Root?

February 3, 2023
George Santos from the 3rd Congressional district of New York

George Santos for Speaker!

January 16, 2023
Commuters waiting for buses in Metro Manila. Philippines

Eight Billion and Counting…

November 29, 2022
Mahsa Amini protests

Imagining a Free Iran

October 24, 2022
Vladimir Putin

How 18th Century International Law Clarifies the Situation in Ukraine

September 29, 2022
Vladimir Putin

Falling for Putin

September 15, 2022
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post