If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide or needs emotional support, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Someone is available 24/7 to take your call.
The Associated Press “fact checked” President Donald Trump after he said suicides rise during recessions. The fact check is wrong – but the truth is horribly depressing.
Trump said on Monday during one of his daily coronavirus press briefings that suicides may increase due to the economic hardships imposed on many by the coronavirus and the quarantine. It’s a tragic comment, and one that is hopefully wrong. The AP said Trump was wrong, but evidence suggests otherwise.
“People get tremendous anxiety and depression, and you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death. Probably and — I mean, definitely — would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus,” Trump said at the briefing.
The AP said there was “no evidence that suicides will rise dramatically if nationwide social-distancing guidelines that have closed many businesses and are expected to trigger a spike in unemployment stay in place.” It spoke to a single expert at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Dr. Christine Moutier.
“It is not a foregone conclusion that we will see increased suicide rates,” Moutier said.
Of course, this is true, as one cannot fully predict the future. Moutier added that, historically, “we actually tend in most instances to see suicide rates diminish” during wars and natural disasters, the AP reported she said, suggesting it is due to society pulling “together during duress.”
But the coronavirus quarantine is not like a war or a natural disaster, it is more like the Great Depression and Great Recession. The AP acknowledge the Great Depression had an “even higher suicide rate” but said it “fell sharply with the onset of World War II.” We are in the Great Depression analogy, not the World War II analogy. The AP also pointed to – but didn’t link to – a study from 2017 purportedly finding “fewer suicides than had been expected during the Great Recession of 2007-2009.”
Reporter Giancarlo Sopo found multiple sources that show the opposite of what the AP claimed. A 2003 study found that the unemployed were two to three times more likely to commit suicide than the employed. A study from 2014 by researchers from the University of Oxford linked a “dramatic spike in suicides between 2008 and 2010” to the Great Recession, Forbes reported at the time. Another study, in 2015, found that suicides related to foreclosure and evictions doubled between 2005 and 2010 – during the housing crisit.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2011 that suicide rates rose during recessions but fell during World War II and when the economy grew rapidly throughout the 90s, thanks largely to the onset of new technologies:
- The overall suicide rate generally rose in recessions like the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982) and fell in expansions like the WWII period (1939-1945) and the longest expansion period (1991-2001) in which the economy experienced fast growth and low unemployment.
- The largest increase in the overall suicide rate occurred in the Great Depression (1929-1933)—it surged from 18.0 in 1928 to 22.1 (all-time high) in 1932 (the last full year in the Great Depression)—a record increase of 22.8% in any four-year period in history. It fell to the lowest point in 2000.
- Suicide rates of two elderly groups (65-74 years and 75 years and older) and the oldest middle-age group (55-64) experienced the most significant decline from 1928 to 2007.
This is not just about pointing out that the AP was wrong to say Trump was incorrect. Suicide is a huge problem and must be considered as we continue to keep our economy shut down.
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide or needs emotional support, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Someone is available 24/7 to take your call.