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Government report says suicides are at a record high; Catholic University of America expert sees number as only the tip of an iceberg, but thinks that there can be solutions.
While it’s newsworthy that a government report shows suicides in the United States as being up by 3% – reaching a record high – for a Washington-based researcher the more astounding figure is that over 16 million Americans seriously considered ending their lives last year.
“
The thing that I tend to emphasize even more [than the number of suicides] is that there are 16,600,000 Americans – adults and teens – who report serious thoughts of suicide,” said David A. Jobes, director of the Suicide Prevention Laboratory at The Catholic University of America. “That’s a massive number of people. That’s over 300 times greater than people that die of suicide. To me as a clinician, as a researcher, it’s a really compelling number. That’s a lot of suffering souls.”
Even during 2019-2020, the first time in decades that there was a decline in the rates of suicide in the US, there was still “a steady march upwards of serious thoughts of suicide,” Jobes told Aleteia.
Continued below.
While it’s newsworthy that a government report shows suicides in the United States as being up by 3% – reaching a record high – for a Washington-based researcher the more astounding figure is that over 16 million Americans seriously considered ending their lives last year.
“
The thing that I tend to emphasize even more [than the number of suicides] is that there are 16,600,000 Americans – adults and teens – who report serious thoughts of suicide,” said David A. Jobes, director of the Suicide Prevention Laboratory at The Catholic University of America. “That’s a massive number of people. That’s over 300 times greater than people that die of suicide. To me as a clinician, as a researcher, it’s a really compelling number. That’s a lot of suffering souls.”
Even during 2019-2020, the first time in decades that there was a decline in the rates of suicide in the US, there was still “a steady march upwards of serious thoughts of suicide,” Jobes told Aleteia.
Highest number in history
Continued below.
The astonishing number of Americans contemplating suicide
Catholic University of America expert sees number as only the tip of an iceberg.
aleteia.org