14 DAY TRIAL // The last decade showed increased rates of suicides in the US, a new survey shows. Strangely enough, middle-aged white women proved more prone to ending their own lives than any other category, which raises new concerns that the existing prevention programs are not entirely accurate. Currently, psychologists advise that teenagers and the elderly should be included in therapies. But now, officials argue that these classes should be extended to include middle-aged women and men also.
The new study shows the first time when female suicides rose above those committed by males. Women between the ages of 40 and 64 exhibited the largest annual increase in suicides, of about 2.4 percents. These statistics are very worrying, especially given the fact that scientists have absolutely no clue as to why this happened. While mid-life crisis could be a possible explanation, it does not fully account for this increased tendency.
Most of those who kill themselves still prefer firearms, the research shows. However, scientists noted that more and more people take their own lives by strangling or suffocating themselves (about 22 percent of all suicides between 1995 and 2005), whereas more than 18 percent of deaths are the result of poisoning. Experts say that movies and other TV programs are largely responsible for the way in which people kill themselves, considering that all motion pictures that depict suicides show strangling, shooting or poisoning.
One of the co-authors of the new study, Professor Susan P. Baker, MPH, working at the Bloomberg School's Center for Injury Research and Policy, said "The results underscore a change in the epidemiology of suicide, with middle-aged whites emerging as a new high-risk group." Authorities recognized the need of developing new prevention programs, aimed at this new risk class directly.
These statistics make no sense in the eyes of experts, as they say that, normally, the mid-life stage is associated with a period of "relative security and emotional wellbeing." The reasons that make people between 40 and 64 years old take their own lives are still a mystery to researchers. They say that further investigations are required, in order to determine the network of societal factors that may contribute to these alarming results.