A new and comprehensive study from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, released Thursday in the American
Journal of Public Health, finds that suicide rates generally
rise during economic recessions, and fall during periods of
strong economic expansion. The researchers examined data from
1928 to 2007, just before the Great Recession began. They found
that suicide rates generally went up during periods such as the
Great Depression, the oil crisis in the 1970s and the recessions
in the early 1980s. By contrast, suicide rates generally fell in
periods when the economy was doing well, such as during World
War II and between 1991 and 2001. The researchers said there
were 34,598 suicides in 2007, the most recent data available.
That made it the 11th leading cause of death in the United
States that year. The study found that the largest increase in
the suicide rate came during the Great Depression, when the
suicide rate surged to 22.1 per 100,000 people. By contrast,
suicide rates fell to the lowest point