County data shows a 66 percent increase in suicides here since 2010
If you live in Allegheny County and you were saddened by the suicide deaths this week of designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, or troubled by a new federal report that found a 25 percent increase nationally in suicide over nearly two decades, the story locally is similarly troubling.
Data from the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office shows that suicides in the county have increased 66 percent over just eight years from 2010 to 2017, with 215 people dying by suicide last year, compared to 130 in 2010.
Dramatic increase in suicide rate in Allegheny County A CDC report Thursday showed that the national suicide rate increased 25 percent between 1999 and 2016 and by 30 percent in Pennsylvania during that time. But data from the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office found that in Allegheny County the suicide rate increased 66 percent just between 2010 and 2017, when the number of suicides here increased from 130 to 215 cases.
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“It’s a striking number,” said Jack Rozel, medical director of re:solve Crisis Center, the designated Allegheny County crisis center that works with people who need mental health support, “and it really begs the question of are our resources enough?”
The county increase over just eight years is far higher than the 25 percent national increase, or the 30 percent increase in Pennsylvania over 18 years between 1999 and 2016 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in a report issued Thursday.
“This is really upsetting to me because for so long our [suicide] rates were going down,” said Lisa Pan, a psychiatrist and University of Pittsburgh researcher who works with adolescents dealing with depression.
A 2016 Allegheny County Department of Human Services study of the county’s suicide data from 2002 to 2014 found that suicide rates were stable and then began dropping from 2003 to 2010.
Dr. Pan and other local experts wondered if the large increase in Allegheny County’s suicides since 2010 was tied to the recent even more dramatic increase in opioid overdose deaths.
But the county’s Chief Medical Examiner Karl Williams said because of the focus in recent years on the opioid issue, he has closely examined opioid death cases, and maybe “only a couple” of them were confirmed suicides.
“So I don’t see [suicides by opioids] as something of a trend,” he said.
The county’s 2016 study did find that poisoning or drugs was the third leading cause of suicide in the county from 2002 to 2014 after firearms/explosions (which are the cause of nearly half of all suicides) and asphyxiation (one-third of all suicides).
But Dr. Williams said in the overwhelming majority of overdose suicides the drug used is an anti-depressant, not an opioid.
Karen Hacker, director of the Allegheny County Health Department, said, however, that while the surge in suicides here may not be directly related to opioids, it could result from some of the same trends that researchers have been finding among death data over the last decade.
“So much of this [increase in certain death rates] is being driven by the white, male, middle class population,” she said. “They’re calling these ‘diseases of desperation,’ and they include opioids, suicide and even alcoholism.”
Such diseases and mortality increases are tied to economic issues and “feeling left behind by the economy,” Dr. Hacker said.
Another factor related to the stories this week that experts are concerned about is the issue of “contagion” that occurs not only when people who are at risk of suicide, see or hear about someone they feel affinity with who has also committed suicide.
Ms. Spade, 55, the designer behind her successful namesake label Kate Spade New York, was found dead in her New York apartment on Tuesday morning. Mr. Bourdain, 61, host of CNN’s “Parts Unknown,” was found dead in his Paris hotel room Friday morning. Both were ruled suicides by authorities.
“I was heart sick this morning when my husband told me Anthony Bourdain died,” Dr. Hacker said, “because he was a role model for older men who want to try different things and take risks in their lives.”
“I am particularly worried right now; the ripple effects [after celebrities commit suicide] are important and real,” she said.
A study published earlier this year found a large increase in suicides — among men in particular — in the months after actor Robin Williams killed himself in 2014.
That just reinforced prior studies that showed that not only can news of celebrities’ suicides lead to other suicides, but so can the suicide of someone familiar to a person who has dealing with depression.
“We do know that when there are widely reported and widely shared deaths, in particular involving details about how they died, those stories can actually be very provoking for those struggling,” said Jennifer Sikora, area director for the Western Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, “and that can lead to them considering suicide rather than seeking help.”
In Allegheny County, Dr. Rozel points out that his facility, re:solve Crisis Center in Point Breeze, is a 24-hour operation that can provide not only counseling by phone, but has a mobile unit that can come to someone’s aid at any time with professional care, “or just a shoulder to cry on.”
And all of it is either covered by insurance — government or private — or paid for by Allegheny County, for anyone who lives in the county.
Dr. Rozel said he “does worry about knowledge of resources” like re:solve. But one of the big services they provide is navigating the variety of mental health services available in the county from hospital-based care, to private facilities, to county-based services.
The re:solve facility is always busy — with 300 to 400 calls a day and 30 to 40 mobile responses a day — so Dr. Rozel said he is not sure what impact the news of Ms. Spade and Mr. Bourdain’s deaths may have.
“But I do know that we’ve already been hearing about the content of their story” in calls from people seeking re:solve’s help.
Dr. Pan said she has been checking with her patients to see what impact those stories may have on them, in particular because both Ms. Spade and Mr. Bourdain presented images of people otherwise in control of their lives.
“Their stories just show again that no one is safe from the risks of depression,” she said. “It can happen to anyone.”
Sean D. Hamill: shamill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2579 or Twitter: @SeanDHamill
Correction, posted June 8, 2018: A previous version of this story gave an incorrect percentage for the increase in suicide rate for Allegheny County.
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