If you're looking for suicide data, don't go out in civilian dress. There's a war on. The National Center for Health Statistics will present one set of figures, collected from death certificates. Suicidologists (as they call themselves, a select subgroup of mental health professionals) dispute them.
Charlotte Ross, head of both the Legislative Committee of the American Association of Suicidology and the Youth Suicide National Center, told the author that the death-certificate figures are off by at least two-to-one. Why ? Well, argue the suicidologists, there are crosscurrents at work in filling out death certificates: family members who can't believe it has happened, who are anxious to avoid the stigma it will give their family or the harm it will cause to younger siblings; coroners with rigid policies (one reportedly will never write suicide as cause of death unless a note is found); and ignorance of the circumstances surrounding some deaths.
For example, there are some strangulation fads in autoeroticism, which lead to accidental death among boys. Parents tend not to know of such things and police officers, who may know, often decide to spare their feelings.
Some mental health professionals say that alcohol and drug use are self-destructive behavior, essentially the same as suicide, and would include accidents under the influence of either in the category of suicide.
So there is a problem of definition. In the popular press the headlines are crisis-oriented, and in legislative hallways the focus is program-oriented. In both places, the highest supportable figures are the ones you will hear.
California has a statewide program of youth suicide prevention in the public schools. Advocates are currently asking Congress for federal money for similar programs. Their bills get bipartisan sponsorship and pass by voice vote because congressmen like to think that death education is a way of preventing youth suicide. Testimony to the House Education and Labor Committee advocating such programs claim that 5,000 young people a year kill themselves. The implication of the data is that passing this bill will save 5,000 teen lives a year. The irony is that among 15- to 19-year-olds - the group likely to benefit from any high-school program - only 1,692 (1,365 boys and 327 girls) took their lives in 1984, the last year for which figures are available. To get the 5,000 figure, the age range must extend from 15 to 24. To be really honest and include suicides of all ages, the total for 1984 was 29,286 souls who found that, as Schopenhauer put it, the terrors of life outweighted the terrors of death.
Actually, the rate of youth suicide (and this again is something you will not hear from the Youth Suicide National Center) peaked in 1977 and has been declining ever since. This was hard data to uncover, but the figures speak for themselves. In 1977, among 15- to 19-year-olds of all races, there were 1,871 suicides. It has declined a step at a time ever since: 1,788 in 1979; 1,730 in 1982, and so on.
Particularly dismal is the situation of the elderly with respect to suicide. While rates are decreasing (a fact attributed to the improved economic situation of the elderly), they remain alarmingly high. White men in their 60s and
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