Midlife Crisis and U(2/2)

Or perhaps people who are happier live longer, and this is responsible for a growing percentage of happy older people. Or, he says, maybe people have seen others their age die and they value more their own remaining years.The report is to be published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.

Last December, government researchers reported a big increase in suicides among middle-aged people in the United States. They looked at injury-related death rates by age group from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand four. They found that suicide increased almost twenty percent among people ages forty-five to fifty-four. No one is sure why.

By comparison, rates generally fell for those sixty-five and older. And for people twenty to twenty-nine the suicide rate was nearly unchanged.

The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the findings are subject to some limitations. For example, accidental drug poisonings might sometimes be mistaken for suicides. Over all, suicides in the United States increased four percent from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand four. That year thirty-two thousand four hundred people took their own lives.