The surprising impact of the pandemic on suicide rates (2023)

Updated at 9:25 a.m. ET May 12, 2023

If you are having suicidal thoughts, know that you are not alone. If you are at risk of acting out due to suicidal thoughts, call 911. For support and resources, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text 741-741 for help with crisis text lines.

andin March 2020, my partner, Amie; our two-year-old son Ratna; and I, who usually live in Kansas City, Missouri, were visiting Kerala, India just before the country's first outbreak of COVID. When it became clear that Kerala would be closed, we drove as fast as we could along the coast and boarded a plane to Delhi. From there we headed towards the most remote place we knew - to the small village of Bir, located at the foot of the Himalayas.

On the way, we were almost turned back at a series of police checkpoints. where? It was never clear. Hotels and Airbnbs turned away foreigners. Rumors surfaced on WhatsApp that other migrants were being held in camps.

The Airbnb host, who was reluctant at first, welcomed us just a few days before the nationwide lockdown went into effect. "Honestly, I shouldn't have let you stay," he told me. "But you can't leave now."

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For the next four months, my family and I lived in a place where outsiders like us were the source of the virus. On the rare occasions when I went shopping (the diapers couldn't wait), I was once scolded and spat on. Another time, while I was waiting for products, I was kicked out of line and told that the meals were for locals only. I was constantly afraid that I wouldn't be able to feed my wife and son or that the police would take us to a refugee camp.

I tried to commit suicidemore than 10 times in a lifetimeand wanting to commit suicide is one of my earliest memories. My adult life was a constant struggle with addictions, depression, anxiety, chronic suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. However, in Bir, despite the terrible uncertainty of our time, I never seriously thought about suicide. I was scared, but not depressed. I was panicking about the outside world, but my inner world - so often the source of unhappiness - was relatively calm. My next major depression didn't come until a year after we returned home. Judging by my mental state, the start of the coronavirus pandemic was one of the best moments of my life. Apparently I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Dw 2020 r-wNAS.I inmany other countries— The suicide rate fell slightly, reversing a decades-long trend. We learned that this is a pattern: suicide rates tend to fall in times of crisis. The sharpestreductionin the United States, suicide rates once recorded occurred during World War II; terrorist attacks and other disasters also reduced suicide rates.

But now they are growing again. This is also part of the pattern. For example, in the months immediately following the 2011 earthquake in Japan, suicide rates fell compared to figures in the years before the earthquake, and rose significantly afterward.

It is worth noting that suicide rates did not fall everywhere during the coronavirus pandemic. Around the world,suicide rateswere generally lower than expected, and suicide ratesWent downin many countries, but it is more common in men and only slightly in women. In some countries there has been an increase in the suicide rate of women. A study conducted in Japan showed that the suicide rate among people from 10 to 19 years oldRoosin the first months of the pandemic. In Maryland, onetestfound that the suicide rate among whites fell by 45 percent in the first few months of the pandemic, but rose by 94 percent among the black population. The number of suicides seems to have increasedamong minority groupsin the United States — particularly in black, Hispanic, and Asian communities — that were experiencing alarming growth even before the pandemic.

Although the overall decline in suicides in 2020, the first year of COVID, is uneven, it offers important lessons for dealing with suicide, both at the individual and political levels. The key to learning these lessons is figuring out why suicide rates have fallen in the first place.

Maria A. Oquendo, former national president of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention,offeredthree hypotheses why suicide rates fall after public disasters. First, crises promote "community cohesion," which mitigates suicide. Another: "Individuals are becoming more outward-looking." Third: "Common suffering makes personal suffering more bearable." They are not mutually exclusive and each has evidence to recommend them. All three resonate with my own experience.

I will start with the idea of ​​community cohesion. At least since Emile Durkheim's 1897 masterpieceSuicide, we believed that one of the best ways to reduce suicides was to create a sense of belonging in our communities.A lots ofstudiesconfirmed this fact as well as his ownreciprocal: Living without a partner, few social networks, and little involvement in social activities correspond to high rates of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and deaths by suicide. The reason for middle-aged and older menhave tendenciesloneliness and lack of social connection appear to be a greater risk of suicide.

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Samoubojica Craig BryanassumedSuicide rates may have fallen during the pandemic as many people spent more time with loved ones by staying at home. Even for those who didn't have loved ones nearby, there was a sense of collective suffering that gave many of us a sense of belonging. As Albert Camus wrote in his novel about another pandemic: "The plague has caught us all." Our isolation is, ironically,Ordinary.

My wife, my son and I certainly didn't feel a part of Bir, but when we emailed our concerns to one of the community leaders, he immediately replied, "Don't worry, we'll all take care of ourselves." This happened when the initial shock wore off. The owner of the hotel where we stayed last year brought us boxes of canned milk; a friend of a friend brought us food from his garden and honey from his bees; another friend found us a house to stay in higher up in the mountains where we could roam freely.

This concern extended far beyond Bir. I felt especially close to my students at Ashoka University and the University of Missouri in Kansas City, even though our classes were held on Zoom. I've been talking and texting my daughters in the US a lot more than before the pandemic, when I was still on a business trip. We all knew we needed each other; we were scared and didn't know what would happen next. Needing others - and being needed—it was a source of deep meaning and comfort.

Now the "outward facing" statement: For many, the pandemic has forced us to look outward. I must say here that suicide is not the result of navel gazing. On the contrary, one effective way to treat suicidal ideation - dialectical behavior therapy - assumes that self-reflection is the cure, not the cause. Still, the fact that the pandemic forced us to face an external threat together seems to be one of the best explanations for why suicide rates have fallen. A lots ofmost dangerous nationshave relatively low suicide rates in the world: annuallysuicide ratein Afghanistan there are six suicides per 100,000 people; in Honduras, 2.6. In 2021, America had 14.5.

Turning my attention to the outside world during the pandemic made me realize and accept that I had no control over what happened next. Living in a state of unpredictable crisis, I had to give up my usual restless desire to determine (or, unfortunately, not determine) the course of my future. In a way, my life wasn'tMineto live at all; this was the life that COVID decided to give me. Life looked me right in the face and said, "I'm driving now. What are you going to do about it? If I had to deal with this alone, I might use my default solution:Well, I'm just going to try to take my own life. But since we had all faced the question together, I felt more up to the challenge.

This leads to the claim that the societal suffering caused by the pandemic has made individual suffering more bearable. I am freed from the usual dark premonitions I have, the certainty that I will somehow mess things up or that I will inadvertently expose myself and the people I love to terrible terror. Whatever happened, it probably wouldn't be my fault; it has happened to most or all of us. So I had to - well, to be more precise, I thought I could - just wait and see what happens next. I had to learn a special kind of patience. It's not that I became a patient person (I could only wish it), but that one kind of impatience - my impatience with myself and the way I was handling my life - was no longer sustainable or even psychologically relevant.

I can't stress enough how helpful it is to teach this kind of patience to someone who is chronically suicidal. The impossibility of waiting, or the suspicion that waiting is futile, lies behind the suicidal impulse. I'm not the first to notice. Suicide of James Hillmancalledsuicide "desire for a quick change". Musician Alison MosshartHe saidof her friend Anthony Bourdain: "His impatience was fucking hilarious... When you're such a big character... every time you have to wait, your brain explodes." Edward livehe addsin his novelSuicidewhich he handed over to his publisher shortly before his suicide: "Your impatience has robbed you of the art of success through boredom."

Tto the factsuicide rates are nowgrowingagain, especially among young people and in black communities, we should not be surprised. Trauma is knownit gets worsemental health and increased suicide and suicide attempts. Regardless of the pandemic's short-term benefits, its lasting legacy is reminiscent of global post-traumatic stress disorder. Mental Health America, an organization that offers free, voluntary mental health screeningsreportedthat the number of people completing the questionnaires tripled between 2019 and 2020. Fifty-one percent of children aged 11 to 17 who took part in the 2020 screening reported frequent suicidal thoughts.

Other factors are also important: after the pandemic, of course, we will return to the habits that changed when we all went through the crisis together. Community cohesion, outward orientation and a sense of community suffering are disappearing. In addition, suicides can now occur that might otherwise occur during a pandemic. Regardless of the reasons, the need for mental health care is great and clear.

Fortunately, we can learn a few simple lessons from the pandemic's surprisingly beneficial effects on mental health. Now is a good time to work on building community cohesion, especially among vulnerable groups. A good example is the Bandana project, which develops care for students' mental health among their peers. Those of us, like myself, who have chronic suicidal thoughts remember that turning our attention outward to the well-being of others—through something as simple as volunteering at a local homeless shelter or community garden—can have profound psychological health benefits. . And just being willing to open up to the people in your life about mental health issues so they know they can talk honestly and safely with you about your own challenges benefits both your mental health and the mental health of others. people you care about. When we know we suffer together and not alone, we fight stigma, reduce shame and reduce the pressure of often isolating mental health issues.

Addressing the impact of the pandemic on mental health will require the same resources we needed to fight the virus itself: primarily money and training for health workers. Many teenagers try to commit suicideyou have to waitdays or even weeks for help, if they get it at all. Many teenagers who end up in the emergency room go 24 or 48 hours without seeing a trained mental health professional.

Solving this problem will require major governmental and institutional commitments. But I think that COVID reminded me that we can help individually. One of the most effective treatments for suicidal ideation is simplicityto talkwith people who struggle. Ask the person you are worried about how they are feeling. Do not try to solve the problem. Let them discuss it. Talking about suicide doesn't plant seeds; brings relief. And for those of us who often have suicidal thoughts, we can help ourselves (although you should also always seek help if you can). For me, that means constantly trying to put into practice the lessons that the pandemic has forced me to learn.

And most importantly, it wasn't really a lesson. That was the question. The pandemic has shown me that life asks me, all of us, one question above all: will you stay? Will you wait with us? As John Donne wrote a year before the plague ravaged Britain: “No man is an island; each person is part of the continent, part of the most important; when the sea washes away the lump, Europe is smaller." The person who did not commit suicide during the coronavirus pandemic was the second person to survive. They helped the rest of us. And they should be proud of that.

This article was originally mistitled by Maria A. Oquendo and falsely suggested that Turkey is one of the most dangerous countries in the world.