Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Suicide Rates Rise, Spotlighting Pandemic's Mental Health Toll
The U.S. suicide rate rose in 2021 after two consecutive years of declines, federal data showed, underscoring concern about mental health in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic. The suicide rate last year increased 4% compared with the rate in 2020, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Friday. The rise was driven largely by suicides among men. Males ages 15 to 24 experienced the sharpest increase at 8%, the report found. (Abbott, 9/30)
It's a sign, experts say, that suicide rates are inching back up to levels seen before the pandemic. In 2021, 47,646 people in the United States died by suicide, up from 45,979 in 2020. That's an increase of nearly 4%. (Edwards, 9/30)
鈥淎 four percent rise is certainly disappointing,鈥 said Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. 鈥淗owever, what had been predicted at the beginning of the pandemic was that there would be a major escalation.鈥 (Bernstein, 9/29)
In other mental health news 鈥
The House passed a bill on Thursday that seeks to address mental health concerns among students, families and educators aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which lawmakers say had a 鈥渟evere impact鈥 on those three groups. The bill, titled the Mental Health Matters Act, passed in a largely party-line 220-205 vote. One Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), joined all Democrats present in supporting it. (Schnell, 9/29)
"It鈥檚 the wrong solution at the wrong time," Dr. Jonathan聽Shedler, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, told Fox News. "You can鈥檛 just carve the world into disorders and think you鈥檙e doing an adequate job of determining someone鈥檚 mental health needs." (Sahakian, 9/29)
The Illinois Department of Corrections has long faced accusations of abuse and violence toward people with mental illness and has continually failed to fill positions for mental health care workers. Now for the first time in five years, its treatment of people with mental illness will no longer be under the oversight of an independent federal monitor. (Heffernan, 9/29)
