The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC for short, compiled extensive data on the suicide rates of each state in the US.
Suicide is a serious issue. But something to consider regarding suicide rates in the United States of America is that many suicides are the result of circumstances beyond avoidable circumstances. One thing that is a heavy commonality among people who die by suicide is an unshakeable feeling of dread, despair, loneliness, and hopelessness. These adjectives can be said to be overused in the discussions revolving around suicide, but they need to be taken seriously for suicide rates by state to decrease.
While situations outside of an individual’s control play a huge role in someone’s mental well-being, other innate factors such as disorders of the mind and abnormalities at birth can heighten someone’s propensity for experiencing depression, whether as the occasional episode or a lifelong ailment.
To lower the rates of deaths resulting from suicide, the country needs to address many common underlying factors that add up and make someone more likely to choose suicide as an outlet. Depression rates are one factor that holds serious importance, but other factors to take into consideration are: academic performance, physical condition, mental health and well-being, economic standing, financial struggles, workplace performance, and over life satisfaction.
The list truly goes on and on, but one factor that holds is that the United States could be working more intuitively and intentionally to decrease the suicide rates by state in the nation. The suicide rates in the United States are not always the most reliable because many suicides go undetected. Even so, it is possible to identify which states have more at-risk factors and then deduce which states are more likely to bear witness to their residents passing away by suicide.
The ten states with the highest suicide rates (per 100,000) in 2018 were:
- Wyoming - 25.2
- New Mexico - 25
- Montana - 24.9
- Alaska - 24.6
- Idaho - 23.9
- Utah - 22.2
- Colorado - 21.9
- West Virginia - 21.2
- Nevada - 20.8
- Oklahoma - 20