Amid persisting economic duress, worries rise about suicides – CSMonitor.com

Psychologists have long linked suicides to economic stresses such as unemployment or credit problems. The recent economic turmoil, in which many people have seen sliding home values, job loss, and evaporating savings, exacerbates the risk, says Nancy Zarse, an associate professor of clinical forensic psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. 

Suicide is historically linked to economic downturns. The rate peaked in 1933, the height of the Great Depression, at 17.4 per 100,000 people, according to the American Association of Suicidology, which studies suicidal behavior and advocates prevention. That peak came one year after the US unemployment rate reached 25 percent, a stark contrast to the jobless rate of 0.04 percent just a few years earlier.

The suicide rate has never revisited that 1933 level, but it has increased this decade – from 10.7 per 100,000 people in 2000 to 11.5 in 2007, the last year tabulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Those latest figures predate the worst of the Great Recession.)