After a two- year decline, suicide rates rose again in U. S. in 2021

A two- year decline in yearly suicides ended in 2021, as suicide rates rose among younger Americans and people of color, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For decades, suicide rates among Black and Latino Americans were comparatively low, around a third the rate recorded among white Americans. But a gradual shift is underway, as suicide rates rise in populations most affected by the pandemic.

From 2018 to 2021, the suicide rate among Black people increased by 19.2%, from 7.3 to 8.7 per 100,000. The swiftest rise took place among some of the youngest Black people, those ages 1024. The suicide rate in that group rose by 36.6%, from 8.2 to 11.2 per 100,000.

Among people ages 25- 44, suicide rates rose 5% overall, and even more significantly among Black, Latino, multiracial, and American Indian or Alaska Native people. The suicide rate remained highest among Native American and Alaska Native people, increasing by 26%, from 22.3 to 28.1 per 100,000 in that period.

The only racial group that saw a decrease in suicide rates across age cohorts was non- Latino white people. That population saw a decline of 3.9%, from 18.1 to 17.4 per 100,000. Suicide deaths in the white population numbered 36,681, more than three- fourths of the total number.

Suicide rates are rising in communities hit hardest by the pandemic, said Dr. Sean Joe, a professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University.

“That’s what we’re unpacking at this point, is cumulative stress,” Joe said. “People couldn’t bury people the way they needed to bury them. They couldn’t grieve in the same way. You couldn’t gather in the same way, to cope with these losses. So there’s a lot of unattendedto grief as well.”

A troubling aspect of the data, he said, is that suicides are occurring at progressively younger ages in nonwhite populations. “We tend to lose older generations of whites when it comes to suicide,” he said. “But among people of color, it’s always the young, not out of the fourth, third or even approaching the fifth decade of life.”

The study did not examine reasons for the divergence in suicide rates among racial groups, but suicide may be influenced by financial stress, social isolation, substance use, barriers to health care and access to lethal means such as firearms, among other factors, said Deborah Stone, lead behavioral scientist at the CDC.

The number of suicides has been climbing for decades and reached its highest point, 48,344, in 2018. Many expected the pandemic to cause a spike in suicides, but in 2020 the numbers dropped for the second year in a row, to 45,979.

That dip seemed to come to an end in 2021, with a total of 48,183 suicides.

Previous pandemics, wars and natural disasters have also seen a temporary drop in suicide rates, as communities mobilize to weather a crisis, said Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Col lect ive emergencies bring a “retrenching, with psychological girding and resilience and working against a common enemy,” Moutier said. “That will wane, and then you will see rebounding in suicide rates. That is, in fact, what we feared would happen. And it has happened, at least in 2021.”