Nov. 2 (UPI) — The suicide rate in the United States declined from 2019 to 2020, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This is despite 2020 marking the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and related social distancing measures designed to limit disease spread, which many experts thought might increase the suicide rate.
“The findings are somewhat surprising, in that the pandemic increased many of the risk factors that are linked with suicidal behavior, such as loneliness, substance use, stress and financial difficulties,” psychiatry scholar Brandon Nichter told UPI in an email.
There were an estimated 46,000 deaths by suicide across the country last year, down 3% from just under 48,000 in 2019, the data showed.
Only three months in 2020 had higher numbers of deaths by suicide than the corresponding months the year before, the agency said.
These were January and February — the months immediately before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — as well as November, according to the CDC.
“One potential explanation for these decreases is that they reflect a ‘pulling together phenomenon,’ which can occur during times of national crises, where social cohesion increases and communities are drawn together,” said Nichter, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego.
The suicide rate for males dropped by 2% from 2019 through 2020, though it increased by 3% to 5% among Black and Hispanic men and by 8% for men of American Indian or Alaska Native descent over the same period.
Meanwhile, the suicide rate among females fell 8%, and it declined across all racial and ethnic groups, according to the agency.
The new CDC figures are based on provisional estimates for 2020 using 99% of all 2020 death records received and processed by the National Center for Health Statistics as of May 19, 2021.
As a result, they are subject to change, given that reporting of deaths by suicide can be delayed due to investigations regarding the cause and circumstances surrounding them, the agency said.
In addition, the numbers of suicides for Asian people, American Indians and Alaska Natives and Hispanic people may be affected by misclassification of race on death certificates.
“Significant racial and ethnic health and economic disparities existed before the pandemic, and it is clear that these disparities have only been widened by the ongoing pandemic,” said Nichter, who was not part of the CDC analysis.
“At this point, we need better national data that examines the specific factors that led to these increases among communities of color,” he said.
However, despite the decline from 2019 to 2020, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, and it is likely remain so, “given the surge in firearm sales during the pandemic,” psychologist Aaron J. Kivisto told UPI in an email.
“It should be easier for people to access quality mental healthcare when they’re in crisis than to purchase a gun,” said Kivisto, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Indianapolis, who was also not part of the CDC analysis.
However, “until this is the reality, we’re going to have a suicide problem in our country,” he said.