Suicide rates increased during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic after declining the previous two years, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows.
According to the CDC data, after increasing between 2001 and 2018, the age-adjusted suicide rate declined for two years across the United States through 2020 but then increased by 4 percent in 2021 from a year earlier to 14.1 deaths per 100,000 people, the largest one-year increase during that period.
In total, there were approximately 48,183 deaths by suicide in 2021, the latest year for which statistics are available, up from 45,979 in 2020, according to the CDC.
In 2021, suicide was the 11th leading cause of death in the United States, having been the 12th leading cause in 2020, according to the latest data….