A 45-year-old man in Porter Ranch killed himself and his family earlier this month after losing his job and money he had invested in the stock market.
One week later, a 53-year-old Pasadena woman was found dead in her burning home, an apparent suicide, after facing eviction from the house where she grew up. The house was foreclosed earlier this year.
Stories like these raise sober questions: Will economic hard times trigger more suicides? What kind of people are most likely to kill themselves over lost jobs, savings and homes? The risk factors for suicide have been well-studied by psychologists and sociologists, says Dr. Robert Simon, psychiatrist at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., and professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. By far, the strongest risk factor is mental illness in the form of depression or anxiety disorders. Many studies have shown that about 90% of those who attempt suicide have a mental disorder.
But there are documented economic risk factors too, including low income and unemployment, says Matthew Nock, a psychologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Nock is coauthor of a July paper, published in Epidemiologic Reviews, that reviewed more than 1,000 published papers on suicides from all over the world and consistently found economically disadvantaged people at higher risk for suicide. Low educational achievement and unmarried status also play a role, he says.
A 2007 report is seemingly at odds with this well-accepted pattern of low social status begetting higher suicide rates. The paper, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, showed that high-status people who experience a loss of job, income or marriage had the highest risk of any group of committing suicide. The study used data collected from 96,000 psychiatric patients in Denmark.
As with the low-status risk factors, specific causes underlying the big-fall phenomenon are not clear. "Is it some psychological factor, such as loss of identity?" Nock says. "I have a more practical view. This could just represent a huge stressor for a person."
Generally, a number of stressors are involved. "Suicides are rarely if ever caused by just one thing," says Simon. An impulsive personality "is one risk factor. If you've got a bunch of other ones, they start to add up."
Adds Nock, "The No. 1 reason people give for making suicide attempts, pretty consistently across studies, is escape from some intolerable or humiliating situation."
