Suicide: The silent epidemic

The death by suicide of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell on May 17 brought the subject of male suicide back into the public domain. But like the celebrity suicide that preceded him, that of actor and comedian Robin Williams, Cornell was a member of the most at-risk social demographic — middle-aged white men.

According to statistics by the World Health Oraganization (WHO) someone takes their own life every 40 seconds globally. And the figures are increasing. The steady rise in suicide rates over the last 30 years has been described as a creeping epidemic and one the public and media seem reluctant to address. The issue has been particularly stark in the United States with an increase between 1999 and 2010 of 30% in Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 taking their own lives. Just imagine if more than 40,000 Americans had been killed by terrorist attacks last year. And yet that number died by suicide with barely a word being written in the mainstream media except where the victim was in the public eye.

The statistics on self-termination make interesting reading. Globally, for every successful suicide there are 10-20 failed attempts, according to the WHO. Women are three times as likely to attempt to take their own lives while men are twice as likely to succeed, largely due to choosing more lethal methods. The success rate increases with age with teenagers and young adults only succeeding in one out of 25 attempts to a 1:4 success ratio in the elderly. Suicide accounts for 1.4% of all deaths globally and was the 17th leading cause of death worldwide in 2015. In the United States, suicide claims more lives than homicide and road accidents combined and is the leading cause of death by firearm.

The reasons for the rising trend are unclear but economic factors seem to play an important role. There is always a spike in suicide rates during recessions and the 2008 financial crisis was no exception. A 2014 study by the British Journal of Psychiatry claimed 10,000 deaths by suicide were tied to that crisis across the US, Canada and Europe. The study’s authors claimed the deaths were linked to job losses, home foreclosures and debt and warned of a looming mental health crisis more generally. Just why middle-aged white men bear the brunt of increasing suicide trends is a question to be answered by sociologists, economists and the mental health profession. But with suicide costing the US an estimated $51 billion a year and affecting families across the whole social spectrum, finding the answers is literally a matter of life and death.