BALTIMORE, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- There is a growing suicide trend among white baby boomers in the United States, researchers say.
Before 1999, middle-age white men were the least likely to kill themselves. However, from 1999 to 2005, the rate for African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Native Americans declined or stayed stable while middle-age whites experienced a significant increase in suicides.
Study co-author Holly Wilcox at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore said the total number of suicides in the United States between 1986 and 1999 decreased by 1.2 percent each year, but in 2000, this trend reversed. From that year through 2005, the rate of suicide among whites ages 40 to 64 increased about 3 percent from year to year.
"Adolescent, young adult and elderly populations are on our radar, because completed suicides have traditionally been higher in elderly white men and because of high suicide attempt rates and potential years of life lost in young people," Wilcox said in a statement.
The study appears online ahead of print in the December issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
