What’s causing the spike in suicides?
Kate Spade seemed as whimsical and happy as her handbags.
In private, though, the designer suffered from depression, anxiety and fears that “the sky was falling.”
Anthony Bourdain’s struggles with personal demons were wellknown.
The celebrity chef and world traveler talked openly about fighting his addictions to “stay alive” for his 11-year-old daughter.
Both died by suicide by hanging themselves last week.
And what the Spade and Bourdain suicides also have in common is that they’re emblematic of a disturbing 21st-century trend: More people than ever are taking their own lives.
Especially middle-aged people. The American Association of Suicidology noted that women between 45 and 64 saw a 128 percent spike in suicide rates between 1999 and 2016.
And NBC News reported, “Since 1999, suicide rates in the United States have increased 24 percent overall and … the suicide rate for non-Hispanic white females, ages 45-64, was 80 percent higher in 2014 than 1999, three to four times higher than for women in other racial and ethnic groups.”
Virtually no portion of the country has been spared.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control said Thursday that suicide rates between 1999 and 2016 increased in all but one state (Nevada) — with the highest increase (58 percent) being in North Dakota.
Florida’s increase during that time was around 11 percent.
Celebrity suicide effect
For suicide prevention experts, what has to be especially troubling is that these two high-profile hangings within days of one another have the potential to spark a more widespread “suicide contagion.”
In February, CNN reported that in the four months following Robin Williams’ 2014 suicide by hanging, there was a 10 percent increase in the number of suicides based on the predictive rate at the time.
That echoed previous studies published by the National Institutes of Health that showed celebrity suicides create spikes in suicide rates.
Even locally in the week after the Williams news broke, Palm Beach County’s 211 HelpLine reported a 61 percent increase in suicide crisis calls.
So, what are the possible reasons why so many more people — especially those in middle age — are committing suicide?
Dealing with depression, addiction
“An untreated mental health issue — usually depression — is the most common reason why people take their own life,” said therapist Lauren Tynes, who works with addicts at Recovery
Boot Camp Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in Delray Beach.
Tynes noted that substance abuse and addiction are often the way people “self-medicate” when they’re dealing with co-occurring mental health issues like depression, anxiety and/or bipolar disorder.
Bourdain, 61, was quite open about his cocaine and heroin addictions — substances he’d reportedly given up.
But Bourdain didn’t eschew all mood-altering substances, as most recovery specialists insist an addict must: He still drank beer and other alcohol — especially during the filming of his CNN show “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.”
Ben Levenson, founder of Origins Behavioral HealthCare in West Palm Beach, said: “There’s an important lesson here. Anthony insisted that he was different than other addicts — that he was a special case who could now, somehow, drink like a gentleman. It’s textbook addictive thinking. Unfortunately, addicts who fail to maintain a stable and full recovery show dramatically increased morbidity and mortality rates with particular vulnerabilities for suicidality.”
Effects of aging, isolation, genetics
Another contributing factor to middle-age and senior suicides — especially in women — might be related to aging itself.
“In our youth- and beautyobsessed culture, women in their 40s, 50s and 60s are often under so much pressure: to be the perfect mom, the perfect wife, the perfect career woman. It can be overwhelming,” said North Palm Beach psychologist Angela Cusimano.
If they have untreated depressive tendencies, the combination of a major life change — say, a divorce or job loss — and the hormonal changes inherent in menopause could be the triggers that send them down a dark path.
“Society can be really hard on women as they age — and today’s social media age contributes to it even more,” noted Boca Raton psychotherapist Felicia Levine.
After Spade’s death, her sister told media outlets that the 55-year-old mother of a 13-year-old daughter struggled with depression privately for years, and Spade’s husband revealed they’d lived separately for the past 10 months.
It’s also possible that Spade, Bourdain — and all creative geniuses — are genetically more predisposed to depression and mental illness.
In a 2009 study published in Psychological Science, Hungarian researchers found that volunteers who scored high on creativity assessment tests possessed a specific variant of a gene — neuregulin 1 — that’s also linked to psychosis and depression.
As the study’s head researcher concluded, “Molecular factors that are loosely associated with severe mental disorders but are present in many healthy people may have an advantage enabling us to think more creatively.”
Breaking the silence around suicide
Some 45,000 Americans will commit suicide this year, making it the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S.
Each and every one will have a confluence of unique contributing factors.
If there’s anything we can learn from these high-profile suicides it’s that no matter how happy, successful or well-adjusted people may appear on the outside, we can’t know all the hurt they feel on the inside.
Dese’Rae L. Stage, a photographer who grew up in Miami and now lives in Brooklyn, knows this deep hurt.
Stage’s collection of portraits and stories of suicideattempt survivors — posted at LiveThroughThis.org — breaks open the silence.
She writes on the site: “‘Suicide’ is a dirty word in this country. It’s a sin. It’s taboo. It’s selfish. It’s not an easy topic to discuss and because we, as a culture, don’t know how to approach it, it’s easily swept under a rug. The problem is that suicide is a pervasive public health issue (the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S.). I get it: we’re afraid of death. But avoiding it and pretending it doesn’t exist is nothing more than willfully perpetuating ignorance.”
In 2006, in the midst of an abusive relationship she felt powerless to change, Stage thought there was only one way to stop her pain: an overdose of pills and booze.
Paramedics saved her life — but her life had more painful realities in store.
“After a suicide attempt, people don’t know how to talk to you, don’t know how to look at you,” Stage says. “A lot of people think you are broken and can’t come back from that.”
But Stage did come back — and is one leader of a growing movement to stop the silence and shame around suicide attempts.
Stage’s collection of portraits and stories of suicideattempt survivors breaks open the silence.
“Suicide is a deeply complex issue, rooted in despair, isolation and, often, trauma,” Stage said Friday. “Add that to systemic issues and devastating life events like job losses and breakups, and it starts to become clear that it really could affect any of us.”
With high-profile suicides, she said, “a lot of the time, the media goes too far with their reporting, and it gets shoved down your throat whether you want it to or not.
“It was enough for us to know that she (Kate Spade) hung herself; we didn’t need to know exactly how she did it, or what color the implement was. It was even worse with Robin Williams. I was really struck yesterday when I read a piece about how deeply the coverage of Robin Williams’ death affected Kate Spade.
“One of the first things I noticed when I was wading through the coverage to see how I wanted to respond was that she used the same method he had. I don’t think she was intentionally trying to emulate him in her death. This is speculation, of course, but I think what happened was that his method was hammered so deeply into her head that when she reached the peak of her despair, it was the first thing to come to mind.”