Suicides in the United States have been rising for a long time — and, according to provisional numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this week, they’ve now risen even higher. This past year, 2022, totaled 49,449 according to the data obtained by the National Center for Health Statistics, making the suicide rate the highest it has been since 1941 — the year the U.S. declared war on Japan during World War II. And this is not just a U.S. problem. Globally, suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults, and it accounts for 57 percent of all violent deaths.
As in previous years, white males continue to be the most vulnerable demographic, committing 23.1 suicides per 100,000 people in the U.S. (as compared to women, who are more than three times less likely to commit suicide). Those kinds of statistics seem cold until they are made tragic by the stories of men like Gregory Beckett, a 46-year-old who committed suicide in January 2023 while at working in his Wells Fargo office in Wilmington, Delaware. (READ MORE: Is the World Finally Realizing ‘Long COVID’ Is a Harmful Fraud?)
Beckett never exhibited serious signs of depression, and his death came as a shock to his family and girlfriend, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sadly, it’s not an anomaly; men are far less likely to be diagnosed with depression than women.
Some try to blame the rise of suicide around the world on a lack of mental health care, but that argument ignores the fact that therapy has never been more available or associated with less stigma than in the modern age. Some 23 percent of U.S. adults visited a mental health professional in 2022 — a number that has risen 13 percent since 2004, according to Axios. (READ MORE: Assisted Suicide Surges in California)
The answer to the rising rates isn’t more therapy. Society needs to stop normalizing suicide.
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