Every 18 minutes someone in the United States commits suicide. Suicide prematurely ends the lives of more that 30,000 people a year. Suicide is the eight leading cause of death in the United States. There are three topics that give suicide its identity they are the variables that make up the different rates, self-destructive behavior, and the different methods people use to commit suicide. These three topics show how suicide is becoming a growing problem in the United States.
In Suicide (1991), a book on how suicide effects civilization, author Stephen Flanders states, "In order to identify the prevalence of suicide among the various members of society, researchers analyze suicide rates in terms of a number of variables" (22). The most common of these variables are age, sex, race, and geography. The suicide rate for young adults aged 15 to 24 tripled between 1958 and 1978 (Flanders 22). Flanders goes on to state, "more then 5,000 young adults kill themselves each year" (22). Suicide is now the third most common cause of death for adolescents age 15 to 19 and the second leading cause for college students and those between 20 and 24 (Flanders 22). The second variable researchers analyze is sex. The suicide rate for males is triple the amount of that for females (Flanders 22). The third variable that researchers refer to is race. Flanders states, "the suicide rate for blacks and other racial minorities has averaged about half of that for whites" (23). The suicide rate for whites was 13.7 double that for all other racial groups (Flanders 23). The last variable that researchers factor is geography. The highest rates are in the Rocky Mountain and West Coast areas, while the lowest rates are in the South (Flanders 23).
The next topic, that gives suicide its identity is the several factors that figure prominently in self-destructive behavior. The first factor that that leads to self-destructive behavior is depression.
