Suicide and Middle Age

It seems to me that teenage suicides get a lot of attention as tragedies, and suicides of the elderly as a sign that we don't manage old age or terminal illness very well. But really most suicides in America are among the middle aged -- 57% are people 35 to 64. This is in the news today because suicides in that age group rose 28% from 2000 to 2010.

There are, broadly speaking, different age patterns in suicide. Teenage suicides are dramatic responses to the crises of maturing and finding a social niche, mediated through maddening hormones. The old kill themselves because they despair of the future and see nothing to look forward to but decline and death.

The middle aged commit suicide because they can't cope.

The big burdens of life fall on the middle aged: caring for children, caring for aged parents, paying the bills, putting food on the table, keeping order in the house and in the community. This is as it should be, because in middle age is when we are at the height of our powers. We have the knowledge, the experience, the steadiness and the strength to get things done.

When it works, there is a deep satisfaction in this. To provide a safe home for young ones, to be the steady rock around which the lives of the weaker and less capable revolve, to do the job well and feel the sense that you have mastered the hard challenges of life -- these are great things.

But sometimes it doesn't work. Suicide among the middle aged unfailingly tracks the economy, rising and falling with the unemployment rate. Middle aged people who lose their jobs lose more than a paycheck. They lose their place in the system, their role as pillars of family and community. Without the sense of strength that comes from succeeding in that role, middle age can easily become an unending burden. If it still falls to you to pay the bills, and you can't, that is one kind of misery, and if someone else can step in and take over your role, that can be a different kind. One of the main compensations our society offers to those who take on its burdens is a sense of being successful, of taking on hard challenges and overcoming them. So when failure stares you in the face, in the form of a pink slip, an ugly divorce, or a market crash that wiped out your assets and reputation, it can be very hard to go on.