Thread by @tylerblack32

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Suicide and Age, 2020-2021
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A way to visualize the change in suicide rates during the pandemic is to plot the "Age curve" of suicide. This is another "Tyler Black exclusive" graph - possible by the single-age years in @CDCgov WONDER.
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Here, you can clearly see an average 2020-2021 suicide rate in 0-20 ages, but quite a flattening occurs throughout 20-70 years of age, whereas in 2017-2019 there is the typical (goes back decades) "midlife hump" of suicide rates.

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Boys and men, who die more by suicide than girls and women, again show a relative following of the curve until midlife ~45 or so, where a clear "flattening" occurred in 2020 and 2021.

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Girls and women, who die of suicide at about 25% of the rate of boys and men, show the same pattern, though the overall shape is way different (it's always been this way in the US). Once more we see a following of the curve until midlife, where things are lower.

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Again, the takeaway is that contrary to the #MoralPanic, there was no detectable "tsunami of suicide" in any age group in either gender.

I will be doing a similar race-based analysis shortly via CDC.

/fin