Suicide Trends: U.S. Trends by State by Sex 1999-2022
Worst rates in the northwest, but increasing rates for all states
Wrapping up my series on recent trends in suicide rates, let’s look at different trends by geography.
Males, 1999-2022
I decided to continue splitting the sexes out for stats, but you’ll soon see the trends are similar by sex.
Though I’m not showing it in the visualization, every state showed an increase in their rate, though some have more extreme increases than others.
The least cumulative increase was in Nevada… only 2%. But then, the rate was very high to begin with.
The highest increase was from North Dakota, seeing over 100% increase.
Note the western/northern states generally have the worst rates in every year.
Females, 1999-2022
First, note I had to use a different scale for females than males — at a quarter scale compared to the males. As I’ve noted before, the male-to-female ratio for suicide death rates is about 4.
Second, you may note that states “disappear” from time to time. That’s because those years, suicide deaths were fewer than 10 and thus the results were censored.
Third, there are similarities in the geographic patterns for both males and females.
Dear Mary Pat (*),
I just want to let you know I appreciate you, and I recommend your writing to anybody who wants honest info on what is really happing to people.
I feel like when I name-check you, you should know. So here's a comment from another site, about -> YOU! Who knows, maybe in ten years rappers and pop stars will be name-checking MEEP along with Old E, Rakim and Justin Timberlake?
* - "Dear Mary Pat" makes me think of early David Letterman, and the character of Larry "Bud" Melman. The "Ask Larry Bud" segment was often hilarious. "Dear Larry Bud, are the theaters in London like theaters in New York?" Was a favorite.
_____comment on other site________
A woman named Mary Pat Campbell is an actuary, and her substack has complete breakdowns of all the fatality numbers, from the CDC but presented clearly and without misleading bias. You know, the way an insurance company, whose entire business was founded on accurate evaluation of risks, might need.
For young people, she had to include a big note that the number of CoVID deaths was not ZERO, but standard actuarial practice, and her settings in Excel, rounded numbers like 0.0006%, to 0%
Her tone throughout is infuriatingly calm and reasonable. I would compare it to an accountant or trustee explaing to a reckless gambler that, no, you are broke. No, you have $8.34 to your name, you can’t bet your way out of this hole.
If she has any righteous or political anger, it is about the huge increase in suicides, overdoses, and car crashes after decades of improvement. (Especially the vast disparity between mortality for men, vs women.) And the papering over, and even naked political misuse, of those numbers.
She’s great. I kind of love her.
https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/
The pandemic, isolation, and ignorance seems sufficient to impact mental health. I am still stumped by the fact that women of Spanish descent ate less likely to commit suicide :-). Thank you for the dynamic charts.