Suicide in the United States
[17] In July 2022, the United States transitioned the National Suicide Hotline from the former 10-digit number into the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, linking both the National Suicide Hotline, the Veterans Crisis Line, and a network of more than 200 state and local call centers run through SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
[17] In April 2016, the CDC released data showing that the suicide rate in the United States had hit a 30-year high.
[29] The spike in suicide rates in the United States during the 21st century has gained public and clinical attention.
In order to achieve this, trends in suicide attempts are characterized among sociodemographic and clinical groups.
Suicide prevention is possible through early identification and treatment of individuals deemed high risk.
[19] Suicide prevention has been thought of as the responsibility of mental health professionals within clinical settings between 2000 and 2010.
The responsibility of public health would be to develop policies to reduce people's risk of suicidal behavior through addressing factors at the individual to societal levels.
This approach requires addressing factors that put people at risk for, or protect them from, engaging in suicidal behavior.
[41] In May 2019, Bloomberg reported that in spite of the recent mental health crisis, insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group, are doing what they can to limit coverage and deny claims for mental health related issues.
[42] A 2019 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found a direct causal link between worker's wages and suicide rates, and that raising the minimum wage would result in a quick drop in the suicide rate.
[28][43] In August 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey conducted by the CDC found that 25.5 percent of people aged between 18 and 24 had seriously contemplated suicide within the last 30 days.
A society in which such a vast swath of the population is seriously considering it as an option is one which is anything but healthy, one which is plainly failing to provide its citizens the basic necessities for a fulfilling life.The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) keeps data on U.S. suicides.
Based on the NVDRS 2016 data, The New York Times acknowledged that, among men, those over 65—who make up a smaller proportion of the population—are at greatest risk of death by suicide.
[16] A number of theories for these differences have been suggested, ranging from socioeconomics (rural poverty) to access to firearms and social isolation (low population densities).
If a college student has any suicidal thoughts, it is always critical to let others, such as members of the school, family, or friends know.
"[63] In 2012, the US Army reported 185 suicides among active-duty troops, exceeding the number of combat deaths in that year (176).
[64] According to a June 2021 study published by Brown University's Cost of War Project, deaths from suicide among active U.S. military personnel and veterans of the post-9/11 conflicts outnumber combat deaths for those same conflicts by four times, with the numbers being 30,177 and 7,057 respectively.
[65] According to a study published by the Defense Health Agency, from 2014 to 2019, US soldiers were nearly nine times more likely to die by suicide than by enemy fire.
[66] In 2023, the yearly suicide rate per 100,000 person-years varied between 21.4 for health care support workers, 16 for registered nurses, 15.6 for health technicians, and 13.1 for physicians, according to Columbia University researchers, compared to 12.6 for non-health care professionals.
[70] In 2023, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, nearly half of LGBTQ students said they had seriously considered suicide.
A 2013 study found that a comorbidity of depression with ADHD is the best predictor of suicidal thoughts in adolescence.
Examples include the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, the 2010 Austin plane crash, the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the 2014 Isla Vista killings, and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.
