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Middle-Age Suicide Surge Baffling

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Los Angeles Times

Published: October 22, 2008

After falling for more than a decade, the U.S. suicide rate has climbed steadily since 1999, driven by an alarming increase among middle-age adults, researchers said this week.

A new six-year analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that U.S. suicide rate rose to 11 per 100,000 in 2005 from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999, an increase of slightly less than 5 percent.

The report found that virtually all of the increase was attributable to a nearly 16 percent jump in suicides among people ages 40 to 64, a group not commonly seen as high risk. The rate for that age group rose to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2005 from 13.5 per 100,000 in 1999.

"We really don't know what is causing this," said Paula Clayton, research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, who was not involved in the study. One possibility, she said, is that the increase might be tied to a concurrent increase in abuse of prescription pain pills such as OxyContin.

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