US suicides increasing, particularly among youth

Gustavo Arnal, the CFO of US retail chain Bed Bath & Beyond, jumped to his death from a high-rise apartment in New York last week.

The New York Police Department said in a statement that the 52-year-old Arnal was found unconscious and unresponsive outside his luxury 57-story skyscraper in Manhattan. It has been reported that Arnal's wife witnessed him jump. No suicide note was found, nor is criminality.

The company has been facing financial problems, and Arnal was named as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit filed last month accusing him and other large shareholders of engaging in a "pump and dump" scheme to artificially inflate the price of the company's stock and then sell it for personal gains.

Arnal's death occurred on Sept 2 at the beginning of the September Suicide Awareness Month and two days before the Sept 4-10 Suicide Prevention Week.

The suicide rate in the US has been climbing during the past two decades, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The total age-adjusted suicide rate has increased 35.2 percent from 10.4 per 100,000 in 2000 to 13.5 per 100,000 in 2020. The highest rate occurred in 2018 at 14.2 per 100,000.

Although the overall suicide rate is highest among people 75 and older, for adolescents and young adults, suicide has become one of the top causes of death.

CDC data show that nearly 46,000 people died by suicide in 2020. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for age groups 10-14 and 25-34, third for ages 15-24, and fourth for ages 35-44.

Although the overall suicide rate declined by 3 percent in 2020 over 2019, suicide rates among the younger population rose.

CDC data show that the suicide rate increased the most (9 percent) for the age group 10-14. The rate also increased 2.1 percent for ages 15-24 and 4.6 percent for ages 25-34, according to the CDC.

A joint by Harvard, MIT and Boston Children's Hospital analyzing data from 14 states saw a similar pattern. The limited data show that the overall adolescent suicide number increased from 5.9 percent from 2015-2019 to 6.5 percent in 2020.

Another study at Boston Children's Hospital showed a marked increase of adolescents seeking mental health help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study analyzed data from 2019 and 2020, found nearly 3,800 children ages 4 to 18 were admitted to the hospital's emergency department (ED) or inpatient units for mental health-related reasons.

In 2019, 50 percent of admitted patients had suicidal ideation or had made suicide attempts. That number increased to 60 percent during the first pandemic year from March 2020 to February 2021.

The rate for "boarding" — patients kept in the emergency department or inpatient unit while waiting for a psychiatric placement — also increased during the pandemic. The study found that 50 percent of patients boarded for two or more days, a big increase from 30 percent in the prior year.

While suicide-awareness programs aim to prevent people taking their lives, it is hard to predict such behavior, according to experts.

"That is extremely, extremely difficult," Justin Baker, clinical director of the Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative for Veterans at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, told CNN.

"You can look back in time, when someone's made an attempt or has died, and go, 'Oh, look at all these things that were going on in their life.' The difficulty is that a lot of people handle or experience those types of stressors as well but never go on to [attempt suicide]."

It is also difficult to provide effective help to people in a mental crisis. Besides a shortage of mental health professionals, some measures are counterproductive.

Early this year, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline launched the three-digit number 988 to offer phone help to anyone in the US in mental health crisis.

Liz Winston, who runs a peer support group for mental health, made an Instagram post in July saying: "988 is not friendly. Don't call it, don't post it, don't share it, without knowing the risks."

In the post, she explained that calling for help could result in risks such as police involvement, involuntary treatment at emergency rooms or psychiatric hospitals and the emotional and financial toll of those experiences.

Winston said in the post that she had personal experience and found emergency room and psychiatric facilities "terrifying" and "medieval". Similar concerns and experiences were conveyed in other Instagram and Twitter posts.

Two studies published in 2017 and 2019 respectively have shown that there is an elevated risk for suicide in the year following psychiatric hospitalization.