Suicide rates drop in big cities
With more social connections, people may be less inclined to take their own lives
By Meghan Rosen
City living could curb suicides. As populations grow, suicide rates tend to dwindle, according to a new analysis of deaths in Brazil and the United States.
And there’s no minimum size that cities have to hit before seeing the improvements, says study coauthor Hygor Piaget Melo, a physicist at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil. When comparing any two cities, he says, the one with more people will typically have a lower suicide rate.