Furious Seasons

June 19, 2008

Suicide Down In 2006

Last week, the CDC released mortality data for 2006 to very little fanfare. It showed that deaths were down in the US, rather sharply too, and that suicides went down by 2.8 percent. The numbers are preliminary, based on 95 percent of death certificates for the year, and final numbers won't be out until sometime next year. We don't have a final number for 2005 yet either--that should come later this summer--but based on early figures released last September, in 2005 the suicide rate was 10.6 per 100,000, so 2006 should check in at something around 10.3 per 100,000. That's a decent drop from 2004's 10.9 per 100,000, but it's kind of hard to draw too much encouragement from it, since it's within the sawtooth pattern of about 10 to 11 per 100,000 that's marked the suicide rate for about a decade.

But a drop is a drop.

It's interesting that no one in the anti-depressant defender community has picked up on this yet and made the argument that anti-depressants are responsible and, therefore, we should all take 'em. Perhaps they are still busy touting dubious data on 2004 that they claimed shows a drop in Rxs that year--the drop was actually in 2005--drove the rate upwards. Or maybe they are still trying to reconcile themselves to the fact that a drop in Rxs in 2005 came at the same time that there was slight dip in anti-depressant use that year which kind of shoots holes in their argument. Or maybe they are still reading the British study from earlier this year establishing that anti-depressant use and suicide rates are independent events. Who knows?

Either way, the US is not even in the ballpark of meeting the national goal of cutting its suicide rate to 5.5 per 100,000 people by the end of 2010, a goal that was set by HHS in 1999.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at June 19, 2008 12:03 AM

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Comments

This is good news. Not a drastic drop and maybe not a significant one. Hopefully we won't see an upward spike with the downturn in the economy.

Posted by: Sally at June 19, 2008 02:38 AM

The sad truth is antidepressant prescriptions have been soaring again according to my understanding so who knows what the interaction really is between suicide rates and psych med prescriptions? One thing is for sure it seems more and more people are taking psych meds and don't seem better for it in my limited circle of acquaintances. I don't think we are going to put to rest any arguments either for or against the relationship between antidepressants and suicide any time soon unfortunately. It's probably pretty complicated -- something like it increases the probability of suicide in certain phases, like at the beginning and during dose changes and in withdrawal and maybe it decreases the risk when you're zoned out and blunted to the point of not feeling anything. It's also true, I believe, that our overall suicide rate increased in the 50's (and has stayed high) when medicating moods started to take off.

Posted by: Sara at June 19, 2008 07:45 AM

What is the definition of a suicide? My dear sister died at 43 from, as far as we can tell, smoking and overeating. Such a death wouldn't be counted as a suicide. Does it only count as a suicide if you *actively* end your life? What about passive, risky behaviour? How many "accidents" are really suicides and vice versa? The stats seem blurry. Could extreme sports enthusiasts be classified as suicidal? What about keen soldiers? Just wondering.

Posted by: Francesca Allan at June 19, 2008 08:25 PM

Conclusion: in the USA in 2006, life sucked a little less than usual...

Posted by: DeeDee Ramona at June 20, 2008 03:19 PM

I'm now bummed that my husband's grandfather will be lumped into this statistic for next year's data. So much for lowering the rate. I can't think of anything that could have been done differently.

Posted by: Marissa Miller at June 30, 2008 07:57 PM