Emily E Wiemers, Shannon M Monnat, Douglas A Wolf, Jennifer Karas Montez, Joshua Grove, Iliya Gutin, Elyse Grossman
{"title":"States' COVID-19 policy contexts and suicide rates among US working-age adults.","authors":"Emily E Wiemers, Shannon M Monnat, Douglas A Wolf, Jennifer Karas Montez, Joshua Grove, Iliya Gutin, Elyse Grossman","doi":"10.1093/haschl/qxaf024","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite expectations that suicide rates would surge during the pandemic, the national suicide rate declined in the United States in 2020 before returning to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. Explanations of the decline in suicides at the national level include a \"pulling-together effect\" in the face of a crisis and a shorter than expected pandemic recession. However, suicide rates and the change over time in suicide rates vary substantially across US states. At various times during the pandemic states enacted physical-distancing and economic support policies that may have affected suicide rates. We examined the association between state-level physical-distancing and economic support policy contexts and suicide rates among US adults ages 25-64 years during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that a 1-SD increase in the stringency of a state's physical-distancing policies was associated with a 5.3% reduction in male suicide rates but was not associated with female suicide rates. Economic support policies were not associated with suicide rates for the period as a whole. The results support the growing evidence that COVID-19 policies had indirect and unintended consequences beyond their direct effect on COVID-19 transmission and death, in this case to reduce suicides among working-age males.</p>","PeriodicalId":94025,"journal":{"name":"Health affairs scholar","volume":"3 3","pages":"qxaf024"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11909630/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health affairs scholar","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/haschl/qxaf024","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/3/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Despite expectations that suicide rates would surge during the pandemic, the national suicide rate declined in the United States in 2020 before returning to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. Explanations of the decline in suicides at the national level include a "pulling-together effect" in the face of a crisis and a shorter than expected pandemic recession. However, suicide rates and the change over time in suicide rates vary substantially across US states. At various times during the pandemic states enacted physical-distancing and economic support policies that may have affected suicide rates. We examined the association between state-level physical-distancing and economic support policy contexts and suicide rates among US adults ages 25-64 years during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that a 1-SD increase in the stringency of a state's physical-distancing policies was associated with a 5.3% reduction in male suicide rates but was not associated with female suicide rates. Economic support policies were not associated with suicide rates for the period as a whole. The results support the growing evidence that COVID-19 policies had indirect and unintended consequences beyond their direct effect on COVID-19 transmission and death, in this case to reduce suicides among working-age males.