US Suicides Soar, Deaths Among Girls 10-14 Show Sharpest Rate Increase, Says CDC
Despite generally declining mortality, the suicide rate in America is climbing and the sharpest rate increase is among young girls between the ages of 10 and 14, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a data brief released Thursday that cites suicide among the 10 leading causes of death in the nation, the CDC revealed that the age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased 24 percent between 1999 and 2014 from 10.5 to 13.0 per 100,000 of the population.
In 2014 alone, 42,773 Americans died of suicide and when broken down by race, the statistics show that black males were the only racial or ethnic group to have a lower suicide rate in 2014 than in 1999.
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Katherine A. Hempstead, who recently published an analysis of U.S. suicide trends in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine called the data "harrowing."
"This is definitely harrowing: The overall massiveness of the increase is to me the biggest shocker--the fact that it touched pretty much every group," she told the L.A. Times.
The pace of the increase in suicides was greater after 2006 when the nation was thrown into a period of economic recession marked by features such as the subprime mortgage crisis.
Hempstead's study of American suicide rates ending in 2010, documented a steep rise that appeared strongly related to financial distress and job problems according to the Times. That that trend continued for four more years may reflect that "the benefits of the recovery have not been shared by all," Hempstead explained.
The average annual percent increase in the age-adjusted suicide rate was about 1 percent per year from 1999 through 2006 but increased to 2 percent per year from 2006 through 2014.
While the age adjusted rate of suicide for males, 20.7 per 100,000, was three times more than that for females, 5.8 per 100,000 in 2014, for the period of the study the rate of suicides showed a much larger increase among females than males.
"From 1999 through 2014, the percent increase in the age-adjusted suicide rate was greater for females (45 percent increase) than males (16 percent increase), resulting in a narrowing of the gender gap in suicide rates (as measured by rate ratios)," said the CDC.
And among the female suicides tracked over the period, deaths among girls just 10 to 14 showed the largest rate increase.
"Although based on a small number of suicides compared with other age groups (150 in 2014), the suicide rate for females aged 10–14 had the largest percent increase (200 percent) during the time period, tripling from 0.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 1.5 in 2014," said the CDC.
Suicides among women between the ages of 45 and 64 showed the second-largest rate increase, 63 percent, since 1999.
"That we've started to see the gender gap close is shocking," said Hempstead who is director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
"Suicide is an important public health issue involving psychological, biological, and societal factors. After a period of nearly consistent decline in suicide rates in the United States from 1986 through 1999, suicide rates have increased almost steadily from 1999 through 2014," said the CDC.
While suicide rates were highest among men 75 and over in both 1999 and 2014, the rate decreased by 8 percent over the period from 42.4 per 100,000 in 1999 to 38.8 in 2014.
Men aged 45 to 64 had the second-highest suicide rate for males in 2014 but unlike the cohort over 75 they had the largest percent increase in suicide rates (43 percent) jumping from 20.8 in 1999 to 29.7 in 2014. While males aged 10 to 14 had the lowest suicide rate of all age groups, they experienced the second-largest percent increase for males (37 percent) from 1999 through 2014 from 1.9 per 100,000 to 2.6 per 100,000.
Poisoning was the most common suicide method for females in 2014, and firearms were the most frequent for males, but both sexes showed increases since 1999 in the percentage of suicides attributable to suffocation, notes the CDC.
