We know that our health is adversely affected by obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and fat consumption, not to mention tobacco and lack of access to healthcare. These factors are holding down what should otherwise be continued gains in life expectancy. They also adversely affect those who survive: the strains of obesity on the skeletal structure, emphysema from tobacco consumption, chronic heart disease, cancer that takes over lives, etc.

Recent studies indicate that not only are we experiencing indirect and long-term impacts on our lives and health, but the rate of suicide is increasing, surpassing deaths by motor vehicles in 2009. What adverse lifestyles are not doing to us in the long-term, we are doing directly to ourselves in the now.

The recent CDC study Suicide Among Adults Aged 35–64 Years — United States, 1999–2010 showed that the largest increase in the suicide rate was among whites between ages 45 and 64, in contrast to the common concern about teen and geriatric suicide.

In general, the suicide rate is related to stressors and the availability of means. The following chart, with data from the National Vital Statistics system, is from that CDC study:

Noteworthy are the increased use of firearms, which account for about half of all suicides among men, and suffocation (euphemism for hanging). The study lists the rates of suicide by state as well as the rate of increase from 1999 to 2010. I wondered about the ownership of firearms in those states.

I found that the study, “Association of suicide rates, gun ownership, conservatism and individual suicide risk,” was published online in the journal Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology in February.

The title a bit provocative, but if the availability of firearms reflects the political views of a population, and if the availability of firearms is related to the suicide rate, then it is possible to find statistical correlations among the three, without implying that a particular political view is suicidal or causes suicide any more than suicide causes a political view.

The study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside presented the following map of suicide rates by state:

The map seems to show higher rates in states where one might expect more gun ownership, but, being a data person, I did a little experiment of my own.

I ran a couple of regressions, down and dirty, not up to publishable, academic standards. I used MS Excel, probably acceptable for this purpose but not a tool I would use for a publishable regression analysis.

My data sets were gun ownership from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for 2001 and Median Income from the US Census Bureau for 2006. First, regressing gun ownership by state on income found that income was a significant factor, inversely related to gun ownership, and explaining 35 percent of the unexplained variation. This is not surprising as rural states are generally poorer and are more likely to have traditions of gun ownership for protection as well as for hunting.

It also meant that the cross correlation of income and firearms ownership might cloud the findings when I looked at the suicide rate from the latest CDC report and its separate relationships to the two factors. Those figures were for only 39 states, so that is how I handled it. My informal findings were that gun ownership rates were strongly correlated with the suicide rate, p=.00025 with R squared =.308, accounting for 30.8% of the unexplained variation. Income was inversely related to suicide and was much weaker, with p=.045 and R squared = .104.

Now, you might say, “Oh, suicide is related to economic factors. With recent economic challenges, of course suicide is rising.” You would be correct. Researchers from Rutgers have provided a graph of the relationship between suicide and unemployment.

Source: Social Fact: The Great Depressions?

That is not, however, the public health issue, as there will always be stressors causing suicide. We need to find a way to block access to guns in the same way that we block access to bridges for suicidal people. Of course, there are a lot more guns than bridges. In the United States we ban automatic weapons from private ownership, so the issue is not whether the right to bear arms can be restricted: the entire debate is how extensive those restrictions should or should not be. The data on suicide suggests that greater restrictions on access would have a positive public health impact.