Study: U.S. suicides rising

After a decade-long decrease, U.S. suicide rates have started to rise, largely because of an increase in suicides among middle-aged white men and women.

White people age 40 to 64 have "recently emerged as a new high-risk group for suicide," according to the study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Suicides increased between 1999 and 2005 by about 3 percent annually in white men and 4 percent in white women age 40 to 64, according to Susan Baker, M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and her colleagues. Suicide rates remained the same in Asians and Native Americans, and declined in blacks.

Overall, the suicide rate rose in the early 1980s, then dropped each year from 1986 to 1999. From 1999 to 2005, however, the rates have increased 0.7 percent annually.

In all, 32,637 people killed themselves in the United States in 2005, a rate of 11 per 100,000 people.

Guns are the most common method of suicide, but their use has declined over time. Suicide by hanging or suffocation has increased among both men and women.

The reason for the increase is unknown. But if economic conditions continue to decline, suicides could go up. "This is a concern, especially when one looks at the high rates during the Great Depression," says Baker.

(Via CNN)