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US suicide rate rose 41% since 1999, especially in rural regions: Study

Saturday, 07 September 2019 6:34 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 07 September 2019 5:47 PM ]

James Kohr places an American flag at a veteran's grave at Sunset Memorial Gardens in Odessa, Texas, on May 28, 2019. (AP photo)

The suicide rate in the United States has increased dramatically in the past 20 years, especially in rural America, according to a new study.

From 1999 to 2016, there were 453,577 suicides among Americans ages 25 to 64, an increase of 41 percent, researchers at Ohio State University said in a report published Friday in JAMA Network Open.

Over the 18-year period, rates among people living in rural counties were 25 percent higher than those in major metropolitan areas, the study found.

A number of factors appear to be driving suicide rates up in rural America, including poverty, low income and underemployment, said lead study author Danielle Steelesmith, a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.

“Those factors are really bad in rural areas,” said Steelesmith.

The study also found that communities with high levels of social isolation, which is based on the levels of single-person households, unmarried residents and transient residents, had higher rates of suicide.

The presence of gun shops was also associated with an increase in suicide rates in all counties, the researchers reported.

The study used data from the National Vital Statistics System, a database that includes information on suicide deaths, including year of death, gender, age and county of residence.

The study also finds that in counties where medical insurance is lacking, and in those where war veterans represent a larger proportion of the population, suicide rates were higher

PressTV-US deaths from suicide, alcohol and drugs reach record

Rates of deaths from suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol have reached an all-time high in the United States, according to a new report.

Earlier research has found that suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States and the rates have increased in nearly every state.

The rise in suicide rates in rural counties is “alarming,” said Oren Miron, a researcher at the Clalit Research Institute in Israel, who also studies suicide rates in collaboration with the Harvard Medical School.

Miron, who wasn’t involved with the new research, said two of the factors identified in the study, high war veteran rates and unemployment, “may interact in a dangerous way.”

“If a veteran returns from deployment to a county without jobs, he might lose hope in rejoining civilian life,” Miron said. “The re-entry to civilian life is a period with high suicide risk, which raises the need to help veterans from rural counties in getting their first job.”

Suicide “is a growing American tragedy,” said Dr. Albert Wu, an internist and a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It has become a leading cause of death in the US, and is a major public health problem.”

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