Deaths by suicide have risen dramatically over the past 15 years in the United States, with a sharp uptick during the last ten years, and people are now more than twice as likely to die from suicide than from homicide, according to recent studies.
While the violent crime rate in the United States has fallen steadily for decades, and modern medicine has reduced the fatality rates of disease and accidents, suicide is experiencing a sharp increase. Suicide is now one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States with more than 40,000 people a year taking their own lives.
Earlier this year the National Center for Health Statistics published a major study on national trends in suicide. The Center found that in the fifteen-year period from 1999 to 2014, the age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased by a stunning 24 percent, with the pace of increase accelerating significantly after 2006. – READ MORE
