Forty-nine thousand, four hundred, and forty-nine.
That's how many Americans committed suicide in the year 2022 as the country itself seems to be slipping into a dreadful moral depression.
According to the CDC, the number of people in the United States who killed themselves rose by 2.6% in 2022 from the year prior, leading to the highest number of suicides in US history for a single year.
Since the turn of the century, the suicide rate was on a steady incline with increases yearly until 2018, when deaths of despair dropped for the first time in two decades. However, since the government-mandated Covid lockdowns, the numbers have begun increasing again, leading to nearly 50,000 suicide deaths in 2022.
Approximately 80% of suicides are among men, despite being just under 50% of the population.
This isn't necessarily a crisis of youth. Americans who are living much longer than previous generations are more likely to commit suicide than any other age group.
Age-wise, older Americans were more likely to commit suicide than their younger countrymen. While 25-64 year-olds made up the bulk of the deaths, the over-85 crowd had the highest rate, at 22.4 per 100,000.
Only one racial demographic group saw a decrease in suicides from the previous year, Native Americans, although the suicide rate is so high in that community that they are still far and away the most at-risk population.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
