A new report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shows that the suicide rate in the US has surged to its highest level in three decades.
In 2014, 13 people out of every 100,000 took their own lives, compared with 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999.
According to the report, the number of suicides in the US has been on the rise since 1999 for everyone between the ages of 10 and 74 but the increase was particularly pronounced among the country’s white middle-aged population.
The report showed that the overall suicide rate in the country rose by 24 per cent from 1999 to 2014.
The suicide rate for white middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the same period and it rose by 43 percent for white men in that age range.
CDC experts did not offer an explanation for the steep rise in the number of “white” suicides.
The report did not break down the suicides by education level or incomes but previous studies showed rising suicide rates among white people without university degrees.
“This is part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health,” Robert D Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, told the New York Times.
In the recent years several studies showed that deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, liver disease and alcohol poisoning has surged in the uneducated white population in the US.
According to the CDS’s latest study, the suicide rate declined for just one racial group in the US: black men. And it declined for only one age group: men and women over 75.
