Hmmm…
In 2014, 13 people out of every 100,000 took their own lives, compared with 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999. The suicide rate increased every year from 1999 to 2014 among both women and men and in every age group except those 75 and older.“The increase is broad-based,” said Sally C. Curtin, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the new report (PDF), which was released Thursday.[…]The suicide rate in 2014 marks a return to 1996, when the rate was also 13 per 100,000. Although the rate fell between 1996 and 1999, it has been steadily increasing since. The pace of increase has also picked up; whereas the suicide rate climbed by about 1% each year between 1999 and 2006, it increased by 2% each year between 2006 and 2014.
This appears to be a major factor.
Another contributor to the rise in suicide rates could be the growing number of overdose deaths from opiate painkillers, which are considered suicide if a medical examiner or coroner determines that they were probably intentional, Moutier said. “Access to lethal means is one of the most significant risk factors for an individual to die by suicide,” she added.
And this is interesting.
In both 1999 and 2014, firearms were the most common method by which men took their own lives, although the proportion of all suicides in men that were firearm-related decreased from 61.7% to 55.4%. Among women, poisoning was the most common method in 2014 and accounted for 34.1% of suicides, down from 36% in 1999.
Despite the decreases in the proportion of suicides related to firearms and poisonings, these methods are still responsible for the largest number of suicide deaths, Curtin said. And at the same time these deaths have decreased, the rate of suffocation-related suicide, primarily hanging, has increased, from 16.3% to 26% among women and from 19.1% to 26.8% among men.
Old school hanging coming back in vogue, I guess.
0 Comments