Deaths by Suicide Drop in 2020 While Overall Deaths Soared During Pandemic

Deaths by suicide declined by almost 6% from 2019 to 2020, according to a report in JAMA based on statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The decline is one hopeful finding in an otherwise grim report that revealed a 17.7% increase in overall deaths in 2020, with most of those directly attributable to COVID-19.

“The reported decrease in deaths by suicide makes us hopeful that protective mental health measures are having a positive impact amid a time of collective distress,” said Christine Moutier, M.D., chief medical officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), in a statement. “While we don’t know the exact contributors to the reported decline in suicides, research does show us that prioritizing and having open, honest dialog about mental health on the individual and national levels, implementing practices that reduce suicide risk in clinical and community settings, and seeking help early and when indicated can reduce suicide deaths.”

In the JAMA report, Farida B. Ahmad, M.P.H., and Robert Anderson, Ph.D., of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics looked at deaths that occurred from January through December 2020, as reported in the National Vital Statistics System. A total of 44,834 deaths by suicide occurred in 2020, a decrease of 5.6% from the 47,511 suicides in 2019. In contrast, the overall number of deaths increased by 503,976 (17.7%) in 2020, with 345,323 of those attributable to COVID-19.

While the AFSP statement noted that the reported decline in suicide deaths is encouraging, it cautioned that much remains unknown about the impact of COVID-19 on suicides. “Suicide is complex, risk is dynamic, and an individual’s personal risk factors combined with precipitants such as evolving experiences with isolation, depression, anxiety, economic stress, and suicidal ideation and access to lethal means may lead to periods of increased risk,” the AFSP statement noted.

AFSP President Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., who also is a past APA president, said it is not entirely surprising that people are less likely to die by suicide in the wake of a collective, community trauma.

“Suicidologists have long observed that suicide rates tend to decline after a catastrophe,” she told Psychiatric News. “The reason is unknown, but some hypotheses include the possibility that individuals become more externally focused given the environmental threat, that the community cohesion that sometimes follows catastrophe has beneficent effects, or that community suffering makes personal suffering more tolerable.”

For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Expect a ‘Long Tail’ of Mental Health Effects From COVID-19.”

(Image: iStock/Juanmonino)

---

Complete Survey on How Psychiatrists Can Address Racial Inequities Today

Today, April 14, is the last day to complete the most recent survey by the APA Presidential Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry. Learn more about the task force and view the results of its previous three surveys on the task force webpage.

TAKE SURVEY

---

Don't miss out! To learn about newly posted articles in Psychiatric News, please sign up here.

Follow Psychiatric News on Twitter!

APA Sponsors Hill Briefing on Steps to Stop 'Nationwide Tragedy of Suicide'

“Suicide is like a bomb that goes off, killing one person but injuring everyone in range,” Kirk Brower, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, told Congressional staffers at an APA-sponsored briefing yesterday on Capitol Hill.

Brower knows the subject intimately. His brother died by suicide when both were in their teens. He recounted living in the years since then with a varying mixture of guilt, anger, relief, and fear—the collateral damage of a single suicide.

The ongoing nationwide tragedy of suicide takes the lives of 44,000 Americans a year and knows no geographic, demographic, or cultural bounds, APA President Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., told the 100 or so people in attendance.

In fact, suicide claimed more American lives in 2015 than war, homicide, and natural disasters, added Christine Moutier, M.D., chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Not all suicidal behavior is the same, and different types may have different symptomatic or neurobiological signatures, said Oquendo. Further research could help could tease out subtypes, explore heritable factors, and develop better screening tools. However, she noted, “One of the most surprising things about research budgets is that the research funding is not in line with morbidity and mortality.”

J. John Mann, M.D., a professor of translational neuroscience in psychiatry and radiology at Columbia University, has devoted much of his career researching suicide. He noted that 95 percent of suicides occur among people with some psychiatric illness, often depression and often untreated. Mann has conducted imaging studies showing how the structure and function of the brains of people who commit or attempt suicide differs from those of controls. The difference was expressed in their decision-making capacity—a trait that could be tested for and monitored as a preventive measure.

In addition to higher research budgets, improved access to mental health care—like that embodied in the 21st Century Cures Act, signed into law the day before by President Barak Obama—could help chip away at the ongoing tragedy of suicide, concluded Oquendo.

For more in Psychiatric News about suicide prevention, see Group Unveils Strategy for Reducing Suicide Rate 20 Percent by 2025.

(Image: Aaron Levin/PN)