Something rotten in the state

It appears 3,128 Australians took their own life in 2017  262 more than the previous year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released national data recently that showed intentional self-harm is now ranked the 13th leading cause of death, moving up from 15th position in 2016.

In 2016, the suicide rate in Australia was 11.7 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 10.6 per 100,000 people in 2007.

This mirrors, but not as severely, the US trend.  The number of suicides per 100,000 Americans rose 30.4 percent between 1999 and 2015.  The increase has not been uniform across all demographic groups. Those in midlife had the largest uptick. For example, for those ages 45 to 54, the rate increased from 13.9 persons that age to 20.3, or 46 percent, during that period.

Strangely, the upticks in the US and Australia  are against the world-wide trend according to the Economist

In the view of a researcher, Steven Stack, a professor of Criminal Justice at Wayne State University who studies the social risk of suicide, two social factors have contributed: 

- the weakening of the social safety net and 

- increasing income inequality.

Another US study showed that 

"states with higher per capita public assistance expenditures tend to have lower suicide rates. ... We also find that general state policy liberalism and the governing ideologies of state governments are linked to suicide rates. In response to a growing literature on the importance of non-political factors such as social connectedness in determining quality of life, these findings demonstrate that government policies remain important determinates as well.