By Bruce Bower
A dark underside of middle-age has surfaced in the past decade. Although this phase of life is one psychologists have long considered a time of general stability and emotional well-being, white men and women ages 40 to 64 accounted for the bulk of a recent increase in the U.S. suicide rate, a new study finds.
Data gleaned from U.S. death certificates show that the overall suicide rate rose 0.7 percent annually between 1999 and 2005, reversing a downward trend in the rate that had begun in 1986. This increase primarily reflected a 2.7 percent annual rise in the suicide rate among middle-aged white men and a corresponding 3.9 percent annual rise among middle-aged white women, say epidemiologist Susan Baker of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and her colleagues.
Over the same time period, self-inflicted deaths among blacks declined by 1.1 percent annually. Suicide rates held steady among Asians and Native Americans, although the rate for Native Americans was 3 percent higher than for whites in 2004.
From 1999 to 2005, the suicide rate for whites aged 65 or older declined by 1.2 percent annually, Baker’s team reports online and in the December American Journal of Preventive Medicine.