Suicide rates rise in 2021. . . Is the lack of funerals part of the reason?

February 15, 2023/Business/

Sometimes I just come across ideas for Funeral Director Daily articles by accident. On Saturday I was going out for my weekly “reward” of a time at a coffee shop and stopped to buy a newspaper to read while there. Since the local Naples Times-Herald was out, I had a choice of the Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and the New York Times. I noticed an an interesting article on the NY Times front page concerning sports betting and Indian gaming and purchased that paper. As many times happens, I came across an interesting article inside the paper, that in my opinion comes under the Death Care profession, and will share that article with you today.

The article was entitled “Suicide rates rose in 2021 among those hit by covid“. Since it is the New York Times I’m guessing that you may get hit with a pay wall if you try to access it, but here is where it should be able to be linked — even the New York Times may give you one complimentary view!!

In essence, the article mentioned that suicide rates had been declining, but in 2021 the rate for all ages and ethnicities except non-Hispanic white people increased. Here’s a quote from the article, “For decades, suicide rates among Black and Hispanic Americans were comparatively low, around a third the rate recorded among white Americans. But a gradual shift is underway, as suicide rates rise in populations most affected by the pandemic. . . . . Among people ages 25 to 44, suicide rates rose 5 percent overall, and even more significantly among Black, Hispanic, multiracial and American Indian or Alaska Native people. The suicide rate remained highest among Native American and Alaska Native people, increasing by 26 percent, from 22.3 to 28.1 per 100,000, in that period. (2018-2021)”

You will notice in that quote that the author states, “. . .suicide rates rise in populations most affected by the pandemic. . . “

Here’s what Dr. Sean Joe, a professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University says of a possible reason for that, “Suicide rates are rising in communities hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. . . .That’s what we’re unpacking at this point, is cumulative stress. People couldn’t bury people the way they needed to bury them. They couldn’t grieve in the same way. You couldn’t gather in the same way, to cope with these losses. So there’s a lot of unattended-to grief as well.”

During the initial pandemic year of 2020 suicide numbers dropped in the United States. That’s not unusual as this quote from Dr. Christine Moutier, the chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention stated in the article, “Previous pandemics, war and natural disasters have also seen a temporary drop in suicide rates, as communities mobilize to weather a crisis. Collective emergencies bring a retrenching, with psychological girding and resilience and working against a common enemy. That will wane, and then you will see rebounding in suicide rates. That is, in fact what we feared would happen. And it has happened at least in 2021.”

Funeral Director Daily take: Funeral directors, for decades, have preached about the “value of a funeral”. And the value of community mourning.

In many cases critics of our profession said that the funeral directors make that type of statement simply to reinforce the reason for consumers to call and use a funeral home. I heard it for years from lots of people — that we just wanted to profit off the sale of services and merchandise to the consumer.

However, if you have worked in our profession for any length of time. . . you know the value that viewing and services and community bring to the grieving. While I certainly would like deaths and especially deaths by suicide to be less, there is a certain satisfaction hearing a mental health professional hypothesize that one reason for increased suicides at this time is because our communities were not able to grieve in the ways that we wanted to, or needed to, during the pandemic.

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