American Suicide Rates Increasing

American suicide rates are increasing. From the story:

The rate of suicide in the United States is increasing for the first time in a decade, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. The increase in the overall suicide rate between 1999 and 2005 was due primarily to an increase in suicides among whites aged 40-64, with white middle-aged women experiencing the largest annual increase. Whereas the overall suicide rate rose 0.7 percent during this time period, the rate among middle-aged white men rose 2.7 percent annually and 3.9 percent among middle-aged women. By contrast, suicide in blacks decreased significantly over the study’s time period, and remained stable among Asian and Native Americans. The results are published online at the website of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and will be published in the December print edition of the journal.

I can’t prove that this is a factor, but are we surprised when the concept of “rational suicide” is being widely pushed, assisted suicide is being called “aid in dying” so as to make people more comfortable in deciding to kill themselves, and self destruction is being shrugged off as merely a “choice?”