Record suicide rates highest with jobless, middle-aged

Record suicide rates highest with jobless, middle-aged
By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jul 19, 2010 @ 12:00 AM
Over the last year a "record breaking" number of people, including more middle-aged men and women, called the Samaritans suicide prevention hot line, a trend site director Eileen Davis attributes to the current recession.

She said the Framingham and Boston centers of Samaritans Inc. fielded 132,000 calls between July 2009 and June 2010, up from 119,000 calls over the same period the prior year. Davis said the "biggest age group of callers" was men and women from 45 to 54 years old.

"Sadly, we're seeing definite increases in all age groups. But we believe we're getting more calls from people in their 40s and 50s who've been most affected by the downturn in jobs, housing and medical coverage," she said.

Davis' observation echoes a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that men and women between 45 and 54 years old have the highest suicide rates in the country among nine different age groups.

Titled " U.S.A. Suicide: 2007 Official Final Data," the CDC report documents a steady increase in suicides for 45- to 54-year-old men and women over a 10-year-period. In 2007, the last year in which national data was available, 17.7 people out of 100,000 in that age group committed suicide.
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Record suicide rates highest with jobless middle aged