Plenty of work have been done trying to estimate the number of deaths from covid-19 in different scenarii. However little has been done to estimate the number of suicides due to the lockdowns.
Earlier covid-19 death models may have erred too far on the side of caution. On March 16th, the Imperial College published a paper estimating the US deaths due to covid-19 to be 2.2M. [1] This study and others have triggered a series of lockdowns across the nation. As of today, April 29th, CDC forecasts “only” 72k deaths due to covid-19. [2] As 47k people die from committing suicide every year in the US [3], the rise of number of suicides due to covid-19 lockdowns should become a major concern.
Covid-19 lockdowns can and will trigger more suicides for various reasons but we will focus on the two main ones:
- Unemployment due to the covid-19 recession
- Isolation due to the covid-19 lockdowns
During the Great Depression, suicide rates increased by 22.8%. [4] Indeed, being unemployed has been found to increase the odds of committing suicide by 246% to 263% varying on gender and age. [5] Covid-19 job losses are expected to reach 47M people. [6] This alone will translate to an additional 9.6k to 10.7k suicides just in 2020. [10]
Moreover social isolation is as deadly as unemployment. Being strictly isolated raise all causes of mortality by 60% to 134%. [7] With 85% of the US population under stay-at-home order [8], depending if the lockdowns are 3 months long or up to next year, and 36.48% of the population living alone in 2019 [9], this will translate to another 2.2k to 20.1k additional suicides in 2020. [10]
In total in 2020, we should expect between 11.9k to 30.8k additional suicides just due to covid-19 lockdowns in the United States.
References:
[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
[2] https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355_tables-508.pdf
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093269/
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1732539/
[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could-total-47-million-unemployment-rate-of-32percent-fed-says.html
[7] https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/Journal/aje/188/1/10.1093_aje_kwy231/1/kwy231_alcaraz_web_material_final.pdf?Expires=1589189099&Signature=SXg0HztTCzfZfwivy8SdNgTZa9YwHrEWTW8QnMYl83lEWyCD2YEA5Ld1hFZNwmFOnqkzkDKLU8baZesyFnX7rFO98FRoTNWiirOK~WSQRiMiejs7XIvD6rZk3SgQ978Er~-sOyY4eJ1XnpucgvyC8h4mNTQyVAi0e5FNjuCRBSd5f8WO~kQgLJxheR1fEC9KkAG4vVGAda2TuUn2PMHdxoNt~LTAyGxySto2WtbOoaX4BeDf1RnYAauYwbKX9Uq14RmKi-ar06qCRhTGAggv78rU4LOQXnyJHFzgJ9DG3glgb0MbnexhNfkIIt7IgGKZpB3NMgbWwO6~zGGdMFeZzQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIE5G5CRDK6RD3PGA
[8] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-map-stay-at-home-orders-lockdowns-2020-3
[9] https://www.statista.com/statistics/242022/number-of-single-person-households-in-the-us/
[10] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GCnHpCwiKXtqavANugHH6f1pC4y2M70EaDXRUoJ42Ec/edit?usp=sharing
