The Curious Case of America’s Suicide Crisis – By Charles Fain Lehman (Free Beacon) / Feb 15 2020
Every year since the turn of the millennium, the number of Americans dying by suicide has risen, with nearly 50,000 deaths in 2018 alone.
That steady increase began after almost a decade and a half of decline and has proceeded at such a pace that 2018’s per capita suicide rate is the highest since the start of World War II. Suicide is now among the 10 leading causes of death in the United States, the second-most common cause for Americans between the ages of 10 and 24, and the third-most for those between 25 and 44.
These figures are a tragedy. But they are also a mystery. Experts have been unable to pick apart a statistical story that grows stranger the closer you look. What, they have been asking for years, is behind this unrelenting increase?
“We don’t have a good answer,” Dr. Jonathan Singer, president of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS), said. “That’s the most accurate answer.”
Other experts are equally perplexed—as one put it, “I have my guesses, other people have their guesses,” but guesswork remains guesswork. Suicide has risen through booms and busts, across age groups, and simultaneously with Americans’ increasing self-reported happiness. Explanations proffered by popular commentators and politicians raise more questions than they answer.
Of the crises of self-inflicted death that have struck Americans in recent years—including drugs and alcohol—the suicide spike is by far the hardest to explain. At the same time, it has received the least attention: While the federal government earmarks millions of dollars for alcohol abuse and billions for drugs, suicide receives little in the way of funding. A lack of research, as well as limited resources for interventions, promise to continue to make this case deadlier every year.
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