SUICIDES IN AMERICA

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4486, 2 August 1930, Page 1

SUICIDES IN AMERICA

LAST YEAR’S HIGH RATIO. The stock market collapse of last year is given as the reason for the American suicide reaching in 1920 the highest figure on record since lUlli of IS suicides per 100,000 of the population. The dismal honour of being first on the list goes to Sacramento, California, which leads with a rate of 02.8. New Yorlc, with ‘27.8, comes only seventh in the list of the ten big cities showing the highest number.

Western people were among the wildest speculators last autumn, which explains, says the analysis, why most of the pacific - Coast towns ‘‘outrank all others in their local tendency to self-destruction."

In support of the statement that suicide rates are eo-related to business failures, it is mentioned that the lowest rate in suicides, 12 per 100,000, was ill 1920, when business was booming, and the highest in lUOS—12.5 —the year .following the big slump. Last year’s figures, it is remarked, are only partial, because the experience of 50 years proves that the full effects of collapses in the slock markets or in business arc “apt to find more adequate reflection a year or more after the crash.”