- And here with us now is Jacob Rich,

health policy analystat the Reason Foundation

and an associatecontributor at Young Voices.

Jacob, thank you for beingwith us this evening.

You know, I think this reportcomes as a bit of a surprise

given how tough 2020was for so many people.

How do you account forthis drop in suicides?

- It definitely is a surprise

because halfway through the year

the Substance Abuse

and Mental Health Services Administration,

one of the departments

under the Department ofHealth and Human Services,

they reported that about25% of young adults

had serious thoughts of suicidal ideation

and those increases in suicidal ideation

we actually saw across all age groups.

The one thing we must consider though

is that when we look at these data,

at the macro level and thelarge geographical level,

like the state level,

we really don't see a corelationbetween thoughts of suicide

and actual suicide rates.

At individual level, it'sdefinitely important,

but not at the geographical level.

So keeping that in mind,

we saw that there wasactually a decrease in suicide

even though thoughts of suicide

at the geographical level went up.

And my hypothesis onthis is pretty simple.

When we look at states rankedby their suicide rates,

the states that have thelowest population density,

such as Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho,

they by far have the highest suicide rates

while the densest states,like New Jersey and New York,

where most people live in New York City,

they had the lowest rates of suicide.

My opinion, looking atthe moving data from USPS,

with people moving andchanging their addresses,

I think people moved out of the states

and repopulated the areas thathad very sparse populations

and actually reduced therisk of suicide in the states

that had the highest riskof suicide previously.

- So it does seem like young people

have been significantly affected by COVID.

Are there more suicidesamong young people in 2020?

- That's a great question

and the JAMA report did not cover that.

There was no breakdown of suicide by age.

However, there weresome early release data

from Massachusetts which were published

in one of JAMA's sister articles,

I'm sorry, sister publications,JAMA Network Open,

and they showed that the suicide rate

I think through March 2020,

the average age of thesuicides from March 2020

compared to the same periodin 2019 was the same.

So with those early preliminary data,

it doesn't look like the demographics

of who committed suicidechanged that much,

but that's only one state fora limited amount of months.

So we really won't knowuntil the detailed data

are published in December.

- What about unemploymentinsurance enhancements?

Is there evidence that that contributed

to a reduction in suicides?

- Well, it would be hardfor it to contribute

to a reduction, but itcould prevent an increase

because after population density,

unemployment is the secondmost predictive factor

in determining a state's suicide rates.

So it's not like providing more insurance

would necessarily lower the suicide rates,

but if there was apotential risk of suicide

by people going unemployed,

the Trump administration's intervention,

increasing the amount of payments

and the amounts of money being paid,

certainly softened the conundrums

that come with being unemployed

and probably prevented the suicide rate

from going to unprecedentedlevels once again.

- All right, Jacob Rich, wewill leave it right there

but we appreciate you taking the time

to talk with us this evening

and help us break down this information.

Thank you.

- Thanks for having me.