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The New York Post reports: "About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II..."The largest increases were seen in older adults. "Deaths rose nearly 7% in people ages 45 to 64, and more than 8% in people 65 and older... "Suicides in adults...

"These data show that between 2007 and 2015, there's substantial increases in suicide rates for both young males and young females," said Tom Simon, an author of the report and associate director for science in the division of violence protection at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the new data Thursday. ... "If you look at suicide attempts by girls, it's typically that girls attempt suicide about four to one or three to one over boys, yet boys complete suicide in the reverse," Tishler said. "That tends, we think, to have to do with the modality...

Against a grim backdrop of rising suicide rates among American women, new research has revealed a blinding shaft of light: One group of women — practicing Catholics — appears to have bucked the national trend toward despair and self-harm. Compared with women who never participated in religious services, women who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide between 1996 and 2010, says a study published Wednesday by JAMA Psychiatry. It’s not clear how widely the findings can be applied to a diverse population of American women. In a study population...

Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Suicide rates among the youngest and oldest Americans have steadily declined since the late 1980s, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a finding that contradicts popular conceptions that rates were rising. The study suggests that new antidepressant drugs may not raise the risk of suicide after all, the researchers said, but they acknowledge they are mystified by what might be causing the decline, because it is not affecting people aged 25 to 64. "For 40 years adolescent suicide rates rose," said Dr. Robert McKeown, a professor at the University of South Carolina's school...

A nation's suicide rate increases under right-wing governments according two studies that have looked at Australia and Britain over the past century.Alienation and isolation may run higher in societies driven by competitive market forces, suggest the teams behind the findings. Left-wing rule, focusing more on equality, might put people under less pressure.Governments should consider their role in public health beyond spending, says social scientist Mary Shaw of the University of Bristol, UK. "We need to look not just at the immediate biomedical factors affecting health, but also how we organize society," she says.In New South Wales, Australia, suicides soared when...