Suicide rate under lockdown

[dogmom]

For those of you wondering why I kept being so vocal that we can’t assume certain outcomes from the pandemic from anecdotal stories this came from my sister hospital:

https://www.boston.com/news/coronavi...virus-pandemic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...mic-unchanged/

To sum it up: “The notion that suicide deaths increased during this period here is simply inaccurate, we now can confidently say.”

Of course if people consisted to suffer for years from hardship secondary to the pandemic I think that is different. But hopefully we will have the will to address those issues. The problem is if we operate on level one evidence, I.e.-it seems to be in keeping with what we generally know, we can get on “road to hell is paved by best intentions.” We put babies facedown for year, teaching parents to do so in baby classes, based on what we knew about aspiration pneumonia and chocking in adults. Then someone decided to study it, realized that it was probably killing babies, recommendations changed and SIDS deaths dropped by 1/3. To make policy on this feels right to me and that’s what my friends tell me is always fraught.

[legaleagle]

Thank you for posting these. Do you know if there are studies about pandemic overdose death rates?

[StantonHyde]

I manage a recovery clinic and intensive outpatient program. We are seeing people getting admitted to the medical hospital with acute issues from drug and alcohol use. Our numbers for recovery treatment are not high. People are not choosing to get sober right now. I watch state rates and we are not seeing higher overdose/substance use deaths now. And my state is known for very high rates of opioid use. (and we are in the suicide belt) I think it will take another 6 months to see what really hits. People are in crisis mode and clinging on. Once things start to get a little bit better, then people will pay attention to their mental health needs. I will say that the people we are admitting to our psych hospital are much sicker/more acute because people are waiting too long to come in (afraid of Covid). And our Intensive Outpatient patients are much more acute-waiting too long for treatment. So its more the delay in getting help that is causing problems right now. As this goes along, the idea is that we will see an increase in impact from the stress/coping skills of the crisis, if that makes sense.

[dogmom]

Thank you for posting these. Do you know if there are studies about pandemic overdose death rates?

I know during our surge the admits for overdoses dropped, but that doesn’t mean deaths were down. Compared to last year deaths do seem to be higher in many places. Some of that is probably due to lack of access to programs.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...se-deaths.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...drug-overdose/

For peer reviewed articles.
Indianapolis: https://link.springer.com/article/10...24-020-00484-0

“ Interestingly, while rates of overdose-related CFS and deaths increased after the stay-at-home order was implemented, they continued to increase after the staged reopening began. ”

San Francisco ED rates, which observed due to decreased foot traffic there may be less people being found early in overdose:

https://link.springer.com/article/10...24-020-00486-y


I couldn’t find any large scale peer reviewed studies.