To Consider On Memorial Day: The Troubling American Suicide Rate

49,449 Americans died by suicide in 2022. That’s a 2.6% increase from 2021, and the highest number ever recorded. The highest demographic rise was over-65, which was an 8.1% increase from 2021. The 45–64 category, age-wise, increased about 6%.

The CDC has also noted that suicides have risen every year since 2006, with 2019 and 2020 as exceptions. Some call it a “silent mental health crisis.” I’m not so sure it’s “silent” per se. Andrew Yang didn’t have the best Presidential (or Mayoral) run but one thing he often said is: “You judge a society by how people are living — and how they’re dying.” Constantly setting new records for suicide isn’t necessarily a good thing.

If you assume 330 million people live in the USA, the suicide rate is only .00014. That’s nothing, right? Well, it’s still essentially 50,000 people, which means the equivalent of a small town-ish — Jefferson, Indiana for example — is dying by their own hands every year. That’s not ideal.

So what is going on?

I think we know some of the bigger culprits: perhaps most notably, there are “Deaths of Despair,” whereby addiction and economic reality get so powerful that you want to take your own way out.

That’s probably one of the bigger chunks. “Deaths of Despair” is still largely an academic concept — it was coined by people from Princeton — and while it’s reached the “mainstream” in the form of some CNN segments or an Atlantic article here and there, most people still don’t understand it that well. I’m sure over-educated liberals think “Oh, disgusting Trump voters dying in hovels?” I’m sure working-class in Ohio think “The elites left us behind.” The sides speak past each other.

The other big chunk here is depression, which I think is probably more common in modernity than we admit, especially with economic realities and the inflationary environment of the last year. A lot of people maybe aren’t “depressed” but they feel as if they’re “languishing.” If you feel like you’re “languishing” and then you hit 2–3 big life reversals, that can spiral to self-destruction pretty fast.

The older suicide spike? I don’t have massive theories there, but I would guess people realize they’re living longer and they know they can’t afford another 15–20 years in America, and they know it’s nearly impossible to get hired over 60, so they just go out on their own terms.

One other interesting aspect to the suicide rise is that one of the big deterrents to suicide for previous generations was the religious idea that suicide prevented Heaven, but now with a decline in organized religion, maybe that concept is less prevalent for people.

Some want to make this an issue of polarization and division, and I can kinda see that, but no one I know who is depressed is that depressed because of Biden or Trump — they’re depressed about the bigger picture of their lives, which includes politics and division, but that’s not the driving force.

Adulthood can be very hard. It can also be beautiful and awesome. But yes, you lose friends, and people become distant, and bosses are assholes, and income can be fleeting, and relationships end and dogs die and people get addicted. It’s not easy. It’s also not supposed to be easy, best I can tell. I’ve been through a lot in my day — been divorced, lost a lot of friends, struggled with addiction myself. Some days I’ve contemplated ending it. I’ve never gotten close, because I still find a lot of beauty in everything, even the broken parts. But I do understand the mindset.

It seems to me like the main thing is we just need to try and be better for people — just listen to them, talk to them, see how they’re feeling, ask if we can help. We need more of a semblance of community, which starts on your block but can extend in other ways. This isn’t a new idea: people have barked about community for years, and we’ve had warnings about loneliness and death and smoking cigarettes being equivalent for years too. But we do need more connection and community, especially at the local level. Neighbors can help.

If you want to prevent someone from killing themselves, it would stand to reason that the easiest path is to give them something to live for. It’s trite to say that’s as simple as someone smiling at them on the street, but I don’t even think it’s that trite. When I’ve been at my absolute lowest, if someone even nodded at me inside a Kroger, I’d be like, “Oh, I exist to someone else.” That’s powerful. It’s not everything, no. But it’s powerful. Many of us live lives of “absenteeism,” essentially focusing on 2–3 people (spouse, kids, maybe parents, maybe boss).

That alienates almost everyone else. So if someone doesn’t have kids, or doesn’t get married, or isn’t close with their parents … they can feel very alone in this society, as dominated as it is by hetero-normative, nuclear family conventions. That’s where the rise in suicide is probably the most pronounced.

What else might you add?