# Historic drop in suicide rate **URL:** \ **Category:** Political Topics\ **Created:** [April 16, 2021, 4:06pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645 "2021-04-16T16:06:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/ao_fan/32/143_2.png) [@ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/u/ao_fan)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:20am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/21 "2021-04-18T01:20:48Z")
so you dont think throwing a pandemic in the mix would make it worse? ---
**Author:** ![SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/srednivashtar/32/2894_2.png) [@SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/u/SredniVashtar)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:21am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/22 "2021-04-18T01:21:41Z")
How many people do you know flirt with suicide? ---
**Author:** ![SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/srednivashtar/32/2894_2.png) [@SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/u/SredniVashtar)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:23am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/23 "2021-04-18T01:23:09Z")
Fwiw I agree the OD stats are messing things up. But I don’t know. The people I have known who want to kill themselves, would not be any more likely be to do it now. ---
**Author:** ![ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/ao_fan/32/143_2.png) [@ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/u/ao_fan)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:23am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/24 "2021-04-18T01:23:58Z")
I do see how a pandemic can make it better in that fewer people are bragging about their fantastic lives on social media, but still, pandemic… I think the results of such a study might be flawed ---
**Author:** ![ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/ao_fan/32/143_2.png) [@ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/u/ao_fan)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:27am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/25 "2021-04-18T01:27:21Z")
Dont know. People dont always talk about it. I know one person who committed suicide and I was shocked by it, but I found out her issues after the fact. She was bipolar. Seemed to have everything going for her too. ---
**Author:** ![ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/ao_fan/32/143_2.png) [@ao\_fan](https://community.goactuary.com/u/ao_fan)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:33am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/26 "2021-04-18T01:33:57Z")
i’m not sure there is a typical person who commits suicide. i have a sample size of one, and she seemed pretty not typical to me. the type of person everyone likes the minute they met her. huge people pleaser and over achiever. it was really sad. ---
**Author:** ![twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/twig93/32/527_2.png) [@twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/u/twig93)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:01am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/27 "2021-04-18T02:01:06Z")
> [@Lucy](#): > > Why would they currently be counted worse? I’ve read this sentence several times and I’m not quite sure what you mean by it? I will comment though, that suicides and ODs are often lumped together as “deaths of despair”. So it would be interesting (in a sad morbid way, but of course we are actuaries) to see how deaths of despair changed during the pandemic. If depressed folks turned to drug use to a greater degree than before the pandemic then it could just be that the overdoses killed a bunch of people with depression a week or two sooner than they would have otherwise made a successful suicide attempt. And if they’re not working anyway then there are fewer drug tests / reasons to stay off drugs. I don’t think the unemployment office cares. (There was a drive a number of years ago to change that, but I don’t think it was successful.) Depending on the employer… some randomly drug test. Many require a negative drug test as a condition of employment. But a lot of that went away an employment numbers plummeted. And if the departments of family services stopped or slowed drug testing… I think a LOT of people halted drug use when they were trying to get their kids back after the state took them away and put them in foster care. No clue how all of that proceeded during the shutdown or what changes might have happened. ---
**Author:** ![The\_President](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/the_president/32/70075_2.png) [@The\_President](https://community.goactuary.com/u/The_President)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:01am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/28 "2021-04-18T02:01:59Z")
Those cultures often take in extended family members when they are down. In the US, many have little to fall back on unless they are lucky and have living, financially stable, and accommodating parents. ---
**Author:** ![The\_President](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/the_president/32/70075_2.png) [@The\_President](https://community.goactuary.com/u/The_President)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:02am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/29 "2021-04-18T02:02:47Z")
Also, the stigma of doing that ---
**Author:** ![Lucy](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/lucy/32/8802_2.png) [@Lucy](https://community.goactuary.com/u/Lucy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:05am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/30 "2021-04-18T02:05:43Z")
I think more people don’t take drugs _today_ because they have to go to work than don’t take drugs because they are afraid of a drug test. I’m sure that unemployment increased drug use. ---
**Author:** ![Lucy](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/lucy/32/8802_2.png) [@Lucy](https://community.goactuary.com/u/Lucy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:10am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/31 "2021-04-18T02:10:15Z")
> [@twig93](#): > > I’ve read this sentence several times and I’m not quite sure what you mean by it? I mean that most drug overdoses are mistakes, not attempts to die. I mean, you’ve talked about enjoying getting drunk. You weren’t trying to kill yourself, you were just trying to enjoy feeling high. And i don’t see any obvious reason why whoever classifies drug overdose deaths would be less likely to call one a suicide this year than any other year. ---
**Author:** ![twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/twig93/32/527_2.png) [@twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/u/twig93)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:25am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/32 "2021-04-18T02:25:59Z")
> [@Lucy](#): > > I think more people don’t take drugs _today_ because they have to go to work than don’t take drugs because they are afraid of a drug test. I’m sure that unemployment increased drug use. Yeah, I didn’t really word my post right, but I meant to include those folks too. But I was thinking about all the out of work medical employees in non-emergency jobs, airline employees, manufacturing, private security… industries where random drug tests were common and unemployment was way up. Maybe someone kicked that heroin habit years ago and turned their life around and found work as an airplane mechanic but now they’re out of work and collecting unemployment so f- it. Let’s do some heroin again. No longer risking the job, so nothing to lose. How much? Oh, the dose they used to use. Body can no longer handle that much and they OD. I lost a HS friend that way a few years ago. Was injured in the army and turned to heroin when they stopped letting him have the narcotics he’d grown addicted to post injury. Was an addict for several years, got help, kicked the habit and was clean for a long time. No one is quite sure what happened that made him decide to go back to heroin, but he did after like a decade of sobriety and he OD’d… we believe on his very first time using heroin in years. Cop friend of mine said this is incredibly common and he sees it all the time when they are called out to check on a report of a dead body or a bad smell coming from the next apartment or a missing person report… Recovered addicts know exactly how much they used to take and when they fall off the bandwagon they inevitably go back to their old dose… a dose that they’d gradually built up to initially but which their body can no longer handle. Just like losing your tolerance for alcohol after you stop drinking for a while. Except that alcohol is far less likely to kill you if you drink the same quantity that your body used to be able to handle. But of course all of that can happen whether you previously worked in an industry that random drug tests or not. I believe that sometimes recovering addicts seek out that type of work as an extra motivation to stay clean. But they might have a job that doesn’t drug test but they choose not to do drugs because they want to do good work (or at least good enough to not get fired, anyway). ---
**Author:** ![twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/twig93/32/527_2.png) [@twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/u/twig93)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 7:55am UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/33 "2021-04-18T07:55:07Z")
> [@Lucy](#): > > I mean that most drug overdoses are mistakes, not attempts to die. Sure, with you so far. > [@](#): > > I mean, you’ve talked about enjoying getting drunk. Nah. I enjoy drinking. Not specifically getting drunk. In fact, I specifically try to avoid getting drunk. I was pretty sloshed on Passover though. > [@](#): > > You weren’t trying to kill yourself, Correct. > [@](#): > > you were just trying to enjoy feeling high. Not really, but I’m sure this applies to others who drink. > [@](#): > > And i don’t see any obvious reason why whoever classifies drug overdose deaths would be less likely to call one a suicide this year than any other year. Yeah, I doubt that it’s intentional suicides being misclassified unless there was a change in the criteria for how they classify intentional vs accidental overdoses. It would be interesting to see those two side by side, but I believe that intentional overdoses are simply classified as suicide. I’m not sure how easy it is to parse out the method of suicide. Guns are a pretty common form of method though so you wouldn’t think that a change in how they decide whether an overdose was intentional or not would cause such a dramatic drop in suicides all by itself. That said, intentional overdose sounds like a hell of a lot more pleasant way to go than a gun shot wound to me. In fact a bunch of years ago I brought it up as a possible method of execution in a thread about the death penalty and whether or not lethal injections were inhumane. (As in replace the current lethal injection with the option to get a quantity of opioids known to be lethal.) But I’m not suicidal… I don’t know if this is how suicidal people think. And I don’t know why Covid would cause people to change the way they choose to off themselves. You’d think that with gun sales up that guns would be more readily available for potential suicides. But perhaps it’s survivalists that are driving the gun sales and maybe suicide rates are low among survivalists? I dunno. Even if that’s correct it would only explain the lack of increase in suicides in light of the increase if gun sales. It wouldn’t explain the decrease in suicides unless the suicidal folks are the ones selling their guns. Which… seems unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/srednivashtar/32/2894_2.png) [@SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/u/SredniVashtar)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:07pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/34 "2021-04-18T13:07:57Z")
> [@The\_President](#): > > Those cultures often take in extended family members when they are down. In the US, many have little to fall back on unless they are lucky and have living, financially stable, and accommodating parents. Most Americans have some form of health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, employment insurance, charity care, ssi, ssdi, homeless shelters, food kitchens, foster care, public schools, charities, and accommodating family on top of every thing else. Also we have things like effective fire-alarms, lots of hygiene, and modern medicine to keep us from falling down in the first place. I realize we could have more safety nets, but if you’re in a developing country you can lose your family/farm to a drought or a fire or preventable illness you might have some family who have resources or you might just be SOL, begging so you don’t starve and maybe starving amyway. Even the beggars in america are usually not starving in rags. ---
**Author:** ![SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/srednivashtar/32/2894_2.png) [@SredniVashtar](https://community.goactuary.com/u/SredniVashtar)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:13pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/35 "2021-04-18T13:13:23Z")
Speaking of, the only suicidal person I know right now is suicidal because of nothing in particular. He has just always been that way. He could work but he is depressed of course, so he depends on: SSDI, Medicaid, SNAP, and family to pay for more doctors, meds, shrinks, nice housing, and various luxuries. He’s an isolated example, but I wonder a lot whether any of the support he receives helps him at all. ---
**Author:** ![meep](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/meep/32/44_2.png) [@meep](https://community.goactuary.com/u/meep)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:15pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/36 "2021-04-18T13:15:30Z")
> [@Lucy](#): > > What’s your source? I’ve had trouble finding easy-to-use stats for injury deaths for several years. Well, it’s not easy-to-use, exactly, but here: [https://wonder.cdc.gov/Deaths-by-Underlying-Cause.html](https://wonder.cdc.gov/Deaths-by-Underlying-Cause.html) It is kinda slow. The last few days, I’ve been pulling detail, but there is so much (such as “W39 - discharge of firework”) so let me give some aggregate results, and just by number, not rate: stacked column: ![image](https://community.goactuary.com/uploads/default/original/2X/e/ed5301287d73c89cc73f98558412467693e4f6d0.png) line: ![image](https://community.goactuary.com/uploads/default/original/2X/6/61888f0bd5d6208f1da8290fec4f3a944a0ff385.png) I’ve started on slices by sex & age group… Let me see if I can give a list of what is captured under what I labeled “chemical accidents” - aka poisonings… and I’ll have to re-look-up how to spoiler things, because I don’t need to do a long list ---
**Author:** ![meep](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/meep/32/44_2.png) [@meep](https://community.goactuary.com/u/meep)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:20pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/37 "2021-04-18T13:20:11Z")
The “chemical accidents” list (at the level of detail I’m looking at) is actually not that long. Here it is: | ICD Code | Underlying cause of death | | --- | --- | | X40 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics | | X41 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsonism and psychotropic drugs, not elsewhere classified | | X42 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens], not elsewhere classified | | X43 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other drugs acting on the autonomic nervous system | | X44 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances | | X45 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to alcohol | | X46 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to organic solvents and halogenated hydrocarbons and their vapours | | X47 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other gases and vapours | | X48 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to pesticides | | X49 | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified chemicals and noxious substances | ---
**Author:** ![meep](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/meep/32/44_2.png) [@meep](https://community.goactuary.com/u/meep)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 1:32pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/38 "2021-04-18T13:32:27Z")
FWIW, one can get to detail on drug for drug overdoses, but that’s a different thing, and I haven’t started pulling that specific info yet. But you may be interested in order of magnitude differences in these causes. Rather than graph that, I will give you the number of deaths for 2019 for all those causes… and sort the list. NOTE: this is count of “underlying cause of death” – there can be only one on a death certificate. There can be multiple “contributing causes”, and that’s not the count below. There is no double-counting. | Cause of death | Cause of death Code | Deaths | | --- | --- | --- | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens], not elsewhere classified | X42 | 29,803 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances | X44 | 24,587 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsonism and psychotropic drugs, not elsewhere classified | X41 | 7,474 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to alcohol | X45 | 2,291 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other gases and vapours | X47 | 994 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics | X40 | 281 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified chemicals and noxious substances | X49 | 258 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to organic solvents and halogenated hydrocarbons and their vapours | X46 | 51 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other drugs acting on the autonomic nervous system | X43 | 27 | | Accidental poisoning by and exposure to pesticides | X48 | 7 | ---
**Author:** ![twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/twig93/32/527_2.png) [@twig93](https://community.goactuary.com/u/twig93)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 2:38pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/39 "2021-04-18T14:38:44Z")
Do they have data for method of suicide? Because as I mentioned I think it might be interesting to compare accidental overdoses with intentional overdoses. ---
**Author:** ![Lucy](https://community.goactuary.com/user_avatar/community.goactuary.com/lucy/32/8802_2.png) [@Lucy](https://community.goactuary.com/u/Lucy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 4:14pm UTC](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645/41 "2021-04-18T16:14:41Z")
So i guess that X47 includes all the farm workers who walk into a warehouse full of nitrogen and never walk out? I wonder what else is in that number. It’s fairly large. Also, thanks! And there are two ways to spoiler [details=“spoiler type 1, default says “summary””] This text will be hidden [/details] Spoiler type 2, “blurred” This text will be blurred [Previous page](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645.md?page=1) [Next page](https://community.goactuary.com/t/historic-drop-in-suicide-rate/2645.md?page=3)