More Americans committed suicide in 2022 than in any other year on record, according to data released by the CDC on Wednesday.
The National Center for Health Statistics recorded nearly 50,000 suicides last year, up 2.6 percent increase from the prior year. The 2022 suicide rate of 14.3 per 100,000 Americans is the highest since 1941.
The increase in suicides was largely driven by older Americans taking their own lives. Suicide rates for young people returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 after soaring in 2021 amid the social isolation and financial stress caused by the pandemic and resulting lockdowns. Suicide rates for children aged 10-14 declined by 18 percent in 2022, and rates for young people aged 15-24 declined by 9 percent.
Aging adults are at the highest risk of suicide, as they combat loneliness, bereavement, and declining health. Men 75 and older had the highest rate of suicide in 2022, at nearly 44 per 100,000 people. According to NCHS data from 2021, firearms are by far the leading mechanism of suicide for men, and the likelihood of their use increases with age.
While males make up half of the U.S. population, they account for nearly 80 percent of suicides. Men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women, although women are more likely than men to have suicidal thoughts.
Women aged 55-64 are at the highest risk of suicide. For women 75 and older, poisoning (including drug overdose) is the leading mechanism of suicide, followed by firearms and suffocation.
The rise in suicide rates coheres to a stagnant life expectancy curve in the U.S. Unlike other developed nations, which have reported a swift return to their pre-covid life-expectancy rates in 2022, the U.S. has had a painfully slow post-pandemic rebound.
Between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy in the U.S. cratered by 2.4 years. After the crux of the pandemic, the 2022 uptick restored less than half of the loss — adding back only 1.1 years.
Suicides play a major role in flattening the U.S. life expectancy curve, along with drug overdoses and homicides. Chronic illnesses like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are still the leading factors holding back America’s life expectancy rates, which had been steadily increasing for a century until 2010, when the curve began to flatten.
The continued hike in suicide rates in the U.S. correlates with America’s unique problem of “deaths of despair.” Many have sought to root the problem in economic, cultural, anthropological, or spiritual grounds. Authors like J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy and Charles Murray in Coming Apart have blamed the rising rates of deaths of despair on declining opportunity, fractured communities, and lost identity, which have resulted in a broad sense of hopelessness across the U.S.
Over 12 million Americans have reported thoughts of committing suicide — a number that has continued to grow at alarming rates.
Mental-health care in the U.S. is harder to access now than it was before the pandemic. About half of the population lives in an area without a mental-health professional, relying on family doctors for mental-health care — or receiving none at all. An additional 8,500 workers, at least, would be needed to provide accessible care across the nation.
The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline), which can be reached at 988, has experienced a surge in calls in the last few years, stretching their resources thin. An increasing number of callers has left a large fraction unable to connect with a counselor. While the Lifeline answered nearly 2,000,000 calls in 2021, over 300,000 were left unanswered before the call was ended.
Counselors and responders across the nation have been working to meet the rising demand for their services. Emergency responders have sought ways to restructure their teams to offer specialized units that are trained to respond to mental health crises. While high rates of suicide and mental health crises show no signs of decreasing, public resources are on the rise.