Changing societal attitudes affect suicide rates

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This article was published 26/03/2019 (2522 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The suicide of Princeton economist Alan Krueger on March 16 is a reminder that self-harm remains an American health crisis and that professional success in no way insulates people from the danger. Krueger, after all, had served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under former U.S. president Barack Obama and was widely viewed as one of the leading labour economists of his (or any) generation.

The data suggest that white and middle-aged Americans are the demographic groups most at risk for suicide. So in one sense, Krueger’s tragedy fits the prevailing pattern — as did the deaths last year of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade. In general, suicide rates among whites are about three times higher than for blacks and Latinos.

Between 1999 and 2017, U.S. suicide rates increased by 45 per cent for men ages 45 to 64 and by 62 per cent for women in that age group. As a result, that cohort surged ahead of the 65-plus age group in absolute terms, with a suicide rate of 19.6 per 100,000 — producing, in effect, a new epidemiology of suicide.

There are many reasons for this rise, all of them important. But one undiscussed explanation is the subtle loosening of taboos around suicide. Surveys suggest that Americans in recent years are more likely to view it as an acceptable reaction not just to terminal illness but also to life setbacks that are emotionally brutal but survivable. (That doesn’t mean these attitudes played a part in any specific recent suicide.)

Other trends have been more broadly reported. The media attention given to the deaths of high-profile people should not distract from the fact that the rising rates of suicide occur disproportionately among working-class and less-educated Americans. In 2014, the most recent year such breakdowns of data are available, men with only a high school diploma were twice as likely to die by suicide as men with a college degree. And although middle-aged men of all educational groups experienced rising suicide rates during the Great Recession (2007 to 2010), since then, rates for college-educated men have slightly declined while those for men with only a high school diploma have continued to rise.

One much-discussed explanation for the rise in working-class white suicide holds that this group has been hit especially hard by changes in the economic landscape: less-stable employment, growing inequality and the disappearance of well-paying blue-collar jobs because of globalization and automation. (Krueger himself sounded the alarm, too, on the effects of economic shifts in the United States.)

Yet the possible cultural component of the suicide epidemic demands close attention, too. Research suggests Americans are becoming more tolerant and accepting of the practice. In some contexts, many Americans might find this tolerance benign — as with suicide, or even assisted suicide, and in the end stages of a fatal disease (although that practice has strong critics, too).

But other attitudinal shifts may be more plainly troubling. One way to track these views is through the General Social Survey (GSS), which, since its inception in 1972, has asked a nationally representative sample of Americans about their attitudes toward suicide. An analysis of changes in attitudes from the 1982-86 period to the 2010-16 period showed that the share of Americans age 18 or older who said people have the right to end their lives in the case of an incurable disease rose from 46.9 per cent to 61.4 per cent.

The percentage who said that being “tired of living and ready to die” was a reasonable rationale for suicide jumped from 13.7 per cent to 19.1 per cent.

Reducing stigma around suicide can be positive — if it means that distressed people become more likely to seek help, for instance. But when, and if, the belief spreads that the act is acceptable under some conditions, even terminal illness, that may have ramifications we don’t fully understand. We need more research to figure out what messages destigmatize suicide in the good sense, opening the doors to life-saving conversations, and which ones “normalize” it as a response to crisis, with deadly consequences.

Much essential academic and prevention work on suicide is focused on biological and psychiatric explanations. Indeed, mental illness underlies the vast majority of suicides. Yet larger social and cultural forces are at work, too, and so far, the major funding agencies that support the study of suicide have paid less attention to these factors.

Part of our national conversation on this difficult topic must confront the fact that an increasing number of Americans think suicide is a reasonable remedy when extreme but common financial or emotional problems arise.

Julie Phillips is a professor and chair of the sociology department at Rutgers University.

— Washington Post