More Suicides in U.S. — Boomers Especially at Risk

Suicide rates have risen sharply in the U.S. in the last 15 years, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed. Among middle-aged Americans specifically there has been a significant rise in death by suicide — and suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S.

Mental health experts and researchers are scrambling for explanations and solutions.

While in general men commit suicide more often than women, women are catching up: Their numbers are rising faster than the numbers for men between 1999-2014. The suicide rate for white women rose a startling 80 percent in the 45 to 64 age group, while for white men it rose 59 percent, the CDC said in a separate report.

One researcher puts a fine point on the distressing news. “It is stunning how many people are dying in the most productive years of their lives,” Eric Caine, director of the Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention and a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, told The Wall Street Journal.

The CDC data says the total suicide rate rose a whopping 24 percent between 1999 and 2014, after 15 years of decline. The increase in suicides jumped after 2006 to an average of 2 percent a year, up from about 1 percent a year from 1999 to 2006.

Behind each number is a grim reality for the loved ones left behind. Wendy Vaughan, who for several years worked as an EMT in communities on the fringes of Boston, Massachusetts, answered many suicide calls. In every case, her response team was too late to save a life.

Her experiences are graphic and sad.

“There’s an intense loneliness in our country — support is not built into the fabric of our everyday lives like it used to be.”

“The majority of our calls were hangings,” Vaughan bluntly told LifeZette. “The most difficult part was always dealing with the emotions of the families. One gentleman in his 60s had received a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and had hung himself from a tree in his front yard. His adult son found him. He was the one who cut him down, and he had to be restrained by police as we worked on his father.”

Suicides among ages 45 to 64 are worrying. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention said in a statement on the new CDC report that “we were encouraged to learn that for older Americans (over 75 years), the suicide rate has been decreasing recently. However, we were very troubled to see the rate increasing remarkably for people between the ages of 45-64, for both men and women.”

The reasons for more suicides are complex and varied. Mental health issues, the economy, and an increasingly isolated and isolating society all seem to play a role.

“In the clients I’ve been seeing, the financial issues they’ve been going through for the last several years are leading to some hopelessness,” Dr. Shoshana Bennett, a clinical psychologist in Orange County, California, told LifeZette.

Vaughan’s experience tracks with Bennett’s professional observations. “The one common denominator in the suicides I responded to was that they were all in lower-income areas,” she said. “Otherwise, we saw suicides across both genders and in all ages, all nationalities.”

Bennett believes the culture is isolating those who may need help. They’re not reaching out, due in part to a cultural emphasis on self-reliance.

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“We are much less involved in each other’s lives,” she said. “We have colleagues at work in our cubicles, but that is very different from real connection. There’s an intense loneliness in our country‚ support is not built into the fabric of our everyday lives like it used to be, and I believe that’s a huge contributing factor.”

As many options as there are for mental health assistance in the U.S., Bennett feels that many people don’t access help due to stigma.

“There’s a feeling of, ‘There’s something inadequate about me if I can’t handle my issues on my own,'” said Bennett. “Relying on personal strengths is all well and good, but we need each other. In times gone by, we had support in our neighborhoods and our families. The current self-reliance is taken to an unhealthy degree, from what I’m seeing.”

According to Dr. Alex Crosby, chief of the surveillance branch of the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, one cause of the spike in suicides among the middle-aged may be the financial downturn. He told The Wall Street Journal that the CDC connected a rise in suicides to foreclosures and evictions several years ago.

Bennett said financial worries are causing much of the depression she’s seeing.

“I’m seeing clients who cannot retire when they thought they would,” said Bennett. “Also, due to that lack of support, the kids grow up and leave the nest, and social connections plummet. We feel alone, and all we have is these long work hours ahead of us.”

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Another reason for suicides is the precipitous increase in overdose deaths, which include suicides. The rate of death from prescription painkillers, heroin, and other opioids tripled between 2000 and 2014, said the CDC.

“A young man we were close to who was in his early thirties OD’d on heroin, and we’ll never forget it — or him,” one Boston man in his 40s told LifeZette. “His family remains haunted. Could I have helped? Was it a suicide?”

There was a startling tripling of suicides in the youngest girls, ages 5 to 14, even though the total number remains small.

Bennett sees young people in her practice, including those who have graduated from college, and many have not learned resilience.

“I see a hopelessness in young adults in the past five years I have not seen at this level before — and I’ve been practicing for decades. They are saying their dreams are dashed; they feel they will never amount to anything. They feel they have no future.”

“It’s a setup, the way we’ve been raising kids,” said Bennett. “Instead of raising them with all this ‘you can do anything, you can be anything,’ we need to instead teach them to roll with what life brings. Not ‘you can do anything,’ but instead, ‘you can handle anything.’ That should be the lesson.”