Washington, DC — Iowa appears to have bucked a national trend of rising suicide rates in recent years.
While more people across the country took their own lives in 2021 compared to 2020, a report from a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization finds suicide rates dropped during that period in Iowa. Brandon Reavis is the senior government relations manager at Trust for America’s Health.
Reavis says it’s hard to specify why Iowa’s suicide rate fell while most other states saw an increase.
The group’s report shows a dramatic 71-percent increase in the youth suicide rate between 2010 and 2021 nationwide and did not offer specifics for Iowa for that timeframe. Reavis says that the increase can be due to all sorts of factors, including housing instability, job losses for parents, and grief, especially during the pandemic.
The report shows 549 Iowans died by suicide in 2021, which is a drop of three percent from the year before. It also shows there were 608 alcohol-induced deaths in Iowa that same year, an increase of 14 percent, while there were 475 drug overdoses statewide, an increase of seven percent.
The report also calls for an increase in funding for mental health services in schools. You can see the full “Pain in the Nation 2023” report at tfah.org.
