England Makes Progress On Suicide

According to the BBC, the suicide rate in England has dropped to a historic low of 8.5 suicides per 100,000 people. That's about a 15 percent drop from the mid-90s. It's not huge--and the article doesn't talk about what changed things that much--but it's progress. Meanwhile, here is the States, the suicide rate is still at about 10.5 per 100,000. That's virtually no change in the last 50 years. What's discouraging is that the feds' public health officials have a national goal of halving the suicide rate by 2010 to about 5.5 per 100,000. That'd work out to about 16,000 suicides a year, as opposed to the 30,000 to 32,000 people who kill themselves in this country each year. That goal has been in place since 1999. Shows you what public health officials know about human existence. The key question is what could we possibly do to cut that rate in half, or hell even by 25 percent? The usual argument that you get is that more people need mental health treatment and more meds, arguing that those who sucide have a mental illness in 90 percent to 95 percent of all cases. I am not convinced of that figure and I am not convinced that mental health treatment is the entire solution. It's part of the solution, of course. But, as tricky as it is to admit, there's something up in American culture and American souls that drives suicides in this country. What the fix is for that I just don't know.