If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”
Nearly every Tuesday for a decade, Steve Siple attended a bar trivia night with friends in Birmingham, Alabama. After moving to North Carolina, he developed a new ritual — joining other Charlotte locals on Saturdays to pick up trash along the city’s light rail.
These are more than fun outings to Siple. They help keep him alive.
Siple has battled suicidal thoughts in the past. He lost his father to suicide, and one of his sons has struggled with thoughts of hurting himself.
That’s made Siple vigilant about protecting himself and his family. In addition to seeing a counselor regularly and speaking openly about mental health, he prioritizes social connection.
“Loneliness was, over my lifetime, one of the greatest risk factors” for suicide, said Siple, a former board chair for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
To some, this concept may seem obvious. Yet in the overall approach to suicide prevention, it’s often overlooked. Treatment of a serious mental illness that can lead to suicide, such as major depressive disorder, often centers on medication and talk therapy with little or no consideration of factors such as social isolation or financial duress. Now, there’s a growing movement to address loneliness not just through personal choices but also through public policy.
The research is clear: Among the various complex issues that contribute to suicide, loneliness is a big one. It’s a particularly strong predictor for older adults, who have the highest rates of suicide, and for youths, for whom suicide is the second-leading cause of death.
Humans are social animals. When we feel cut off from one another, our stress levels increase, our immune systems are disrupted, and ultimately we’re likely to die earlier (by suicide or of other causes). An oft-cited study concluded that being socially disconnected is as harmful to one’s health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
And it’s getting worse.
Mental health researchers and clinicians say a variety of factors are fueling increased rates of loneliness in America, including the rapid growth of technology, such as smartphones and artificial intelligence; increased political polarization; the shift to remote work since the covid pandemic; and decreased participation in religious institutions.
With suicide rates remaining stubbornly high — often ranking among the top 10 causes of death in America — some advocates and people who have lost loved ones to suicide say increasing pathways to social connection could be a new frontier.
In this ongoing series, KFF Health News is examining new approaches to suicide prevention that shift the focus from stopping harm in moments of crisis to efforts that give people reasons to live well before they make fateful choices.
“If we want to