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My neighbor two doors down (age 58) took his own life last month. An 80 year-old woman not far from us just died 18 days after jumping off a bridge. Two members of my circle experienced suicidal ideation this summer.
I shared my concerns about my casual observations back in January, hypothesizing that COVID-19 is a variable in suicide risk:
I still think that’s true, and we now have new provisional data from the CDC confirming an increase in suicides in 2022. The coverage of the increase in suicides doesn’t mention COVID-19 at all.
That’s an interesting choice given the evidence of the brain inflammation caused by COVID-19 plus the fact that the largest increases in suicide were in older adult populations: An increase of 7% in the 45-64 group and 8% among those 65+ (data summarized by NBC in a link above, but here’s the direct link to the CDC’s provisional data on the matter).
Meanwhile, while COVID-19 cases are pretty equally spread across age groups, those who are 50+ experienced higher hospitalization and death rates.
Correlation is not causation, of course. But I am sharing this information again for the sake of sensemaking: Someone we never believed could be at risk for suicide before COVID-19 could be at risk today.
Factoring this information into our sensemaking when interacting with others might help us see something we wouldn’t ordinarily see.
Stay safe out there.