Higher Suicide Rate for Baby Boomers

Baby boomers are now middle-aged and those who are not married or that did not graduate from college, have a very high suicide risk, according to a new study.

There is a serious rise in suicide rates among middle-aged people, who are know the baby boomers, say sociologists Ellen Idler of Emory University and Julie Phillips of Rutgers University.

The concerning fact is that the middle-aged people group was considered to be protected from suicide and had historically stable suicide rates, but these last peaked between 1999 and 2005.

Idler says that “the findings are disturbing, because they're a reversal of a long-standing trend,” and she notes that the suicide rate for the US population overall has been declining for decades.

People born between 1945 and 1964, the baby boomers, have broken the low suicide rate pattern among middle-aged people, and Phillips, who is a social demographer, says that “this is a striking new trend.”

“Since the 1930s and up to the 1990s, suicide rates among middle-aged people – people aged 40 to 59 – were declining or pretty stable, but after 2000, this picture changed dramatically,” she added.

The study notes that by the year 2000, most people aged between 40 and 59 were baby boomers, and it is then that the suicide rate started climbing steadily.

The two researchers found that between 1999 and 2005, there were over 2% increase in suicides for men, and over 3% for women, a year.

The most affected baby boomers (by 2005 all middle-aged people were baby boomers) were those who were unmarried as well as those without a college degree, the study results showed - from 2000 to 2005, the suicide rate reached almost 30% for men and women aged 50 to 59 with some college but no degree.

The strange thing is that the baby boomers also experienced higher suicide rates during their adolescence and young adulthood, nearly doubling the rate for those age groups at the time, and after this period, the rates declined only to rise again when they got to middle-age.

Idler says that “you might think that the higher rates in adolescence would lead to lower rates later because the most suicide prone people would be gone but that doesn't appear to be the case.

“Clinical studies often show that knowing someone who committed suicide is considered a risk factor for later doing it yourself, and that may be one factor here.

“The high rates in adolescence could actually be contributing to the high rates in middle age.”

The problem is that traditionally, midlife has been considered a time when people are at their peak of social integration, even if some have their midlife crisis.

“We need to pay attention to this new increase in suicides, during a period of life previously thought to be stable and relatively protected from suicide, and in an age group now occupied by extraordinarily large numbers of people,” said Idler.

All information for the study was drawn from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Census Bureau.

This study has been published in the September/October issue of the journal Public Health Reports.