The rising tide of suicide

News that Anthony Bourdain committed suicide, coming on the heels of Kate Spade's, have people wondering why.

Normally, I wouldn't worry about anecdotes of two celebrities, but NPR reported the U.S. has seen a 30 percent increase in suicides since 1999. [Source]

While the issue of school shootings initially made me wonder if this is because of firearms, rates are up across all methods. In Mr. Bourdain's case, it was by hanging.

Yet firearms are involved in half of all suicides, and easy access to firearms is a factor in many of the 45,000 lives lost annually to suicide. According to Robert Gebbia, the head of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention,

"You may be thinking about it over time, but that moment when you actually make an attempt is a very short window. If you could make it harder to make that attempt by not having access to the means, often what happens is the feelings will pass, it gives people time for someone to intervene and get them help, so that is a really important preventative step that can be done. And there's good research to support that."

I remember reading in January that many millennials are "total perfectionists" (as though there's such a thing as a "partial perfectionists"). [Source]

Whether this is the result of standardized tests, video games, or something else, no one can say with any certainty, but it makes me wonder the best way to fix the problem.

The NPR article talks about the lack of federal funding for an adult program, but I think it makes sense to keep this at a state level. Without any constraints on federal spending, and the de facto impossibility of raising tax revenues, I don't see a country-wide program-based solution to the problem.