On America's Rise of Midlife Suicide

The New York Times recently published an article, "Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers", in which the author sites research that says,

A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.)

For women 45 to 54, the rate leapt 31 percent. “That is certainly a break from trends of the past,” said Ann Haas, the research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

By contrast, the suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds increased less than 2 percent during that five-year period — and decreased among people 65 and older.

…At the moment, the prime suspect is the skyrocketing use — and abuse — of prescription drugs.

But why are people abusing Rx drugs? Let me postulate an answer: In the United States and in European nations, more and more jobs are service and executive jobs, were people "sell their 'personality'" to quote Fromm. Perhaps people are killing themselves more because they are already dead and so alienated that they cannot find a safe return. This would also account for the skyrocket in women's suicide, many of whom are now part of the service and executive economy. Fromm says,

Marx did not foresee the extent to which alienation was to become the fate of the vast majority of people, especially of the ever-increasing segment of the population which manipulates symbols and men, rather than machines. If anything, the clerk, the salesman, the executive, are even more alienated today than the skilled manual worker. The latter's functioning still depends on the expression of certain personal qualities like skill, reliability, etc., and he is not forced to sell his "personality," his smile, his opinions in the bargain; the symbol manipulators are hired not only for their skill, but for all those personality qualities which make them "attractive personality packages," easy to handle and manipulate. (pp. 56-7, Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, Frederick Ungar Publishing, New York, 1961).