County notes 66 percent rise in suicides since 2010

Experts can’t pinpoint why rate is higher than state, national figures

If you live in Allegheny County and you were saddened by the suicides this week of designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain or concerned by a new federal report that found a 25 percent increase nationally in suicide over 17 years, the story locally is similarly troubling.

Data from the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office shows that the suicide rate in the county has increased 66 percent over eight years — with the number of suicides climbing from 130 in 2010 to 215 in 2017.

“It’s a striking number,” said Dr. Jack Rozel, medical director of re:solve Crisis Services, the designated Allegheny County center for people who need mental health support, “and it really begs the question of are our resources enough?”

The county increase over eight years is higher than the 25 percent national increase, or the 30 percent increase in Pennsylvania over 18 years between 1999 and 2016 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in a report issued Thursday.

“This is really upsetting to me because for so long our [suicide] rates were going down,” said Lisa Pan, a psychiatrist and University of Pittsburgh researcher who works with adolescents dealing with depression.

A 2016 study of the county’s suicide data from 2002 to 2014 by the Allegheny County Department of Human Services found that rates were stable and then began dropping from 2003 to 2010.

Dr. Pan and other local experts wondered whether the rise in Allegheny County’s suicides since 2010 was tied to the recent and even more dramatic increase in opioid overdose deaths.

But the county chief medical examiner, Dr. Karl Williams, said because of the focus in recent years on the opioid issue, he has closely examined opioid death