Nicholas Ristoff works the crisis hotline at Contact Community Center in East Syracuse Monday, March 21, 2022. NEW YORK — About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday., has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II.
Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by a range of factors, including higher rates of depression and limited availability of mental health services. The rate fell slightly in 2019. It dropped again in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some experts tied that to a phenomenon seen in the early stages of wars and natural disasters, when people pull together and support each other.
Many middle-aged and elderly people experience problems like losing a job or losing a spouse, and it’s important to reduce stigma and other obstacles to them getting assistance, said Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer. There was a more than 8% drop in suicides in people ages 10 to 24 in 2022. That may be due to increased attention to youth mental health issues and a push for schools and others to focus on the problem, CDC officials said.Christina Wilbur lost her 21-year-old son, Cale, on June 16 last year. He died in her home in Land O’ Lakes, Florida.
She describes her life since as black hole of emptiness and sorrow, and had found it hard to talk to friends or even family about Cale.
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