Kate Spade’s Death Ignites Concern About Rising Suicide Rate

Fashion designer Kate Spade’s death Tuesday has reminded Americans of the enormous toll of suicide, a growing problem that claims nearly 45,000 lives a year.
Suicide rates in the U.S. have risen nearly 30 percent since 1999, according to a report released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicides increased in both men and women, in all ethnic groups and in both urban and rural areas. Suicide and “self-harm,” a category that includes attempted suicides, cost the nation $70 billion a year in medical care and lost work time.
Nearly half of people who died by suicide had a known mental health condition, according to the CDC. Family members have given different accounts of Spade’s struggle. In media interviews, her sister, Reta Saffo, has said that she believes the designer suffered from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. The designer’s husband said in a statement that she “suffered from depression and anxiety for many years” and “was actively seeking help.”
Regardless of the exact diagnosis, it seems that Spade was among the millions of Americans suffering from serious mental illness, said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, who has no personal knowledge of the case. The country needs to take suicide and mental illness more seriously, said Lieberman, noting that both depression and bipolar disorder can be treated successfully, and that suicide is often preventable.
“Suicide is not an acceptable outcome for depression,” Lieberman said.
Although more Americans die from suicides than car accidents or opioids, the stigma of mental illness prevents suicide from getting much attention, apart from fleeting news coverage when celebrities, such as comedian Robin Williams, take their own lives, Lieberman said.
People suffering from serious mental illness are at high risk of suicide, said Dr. Jennifer Payne, director of the Women’s Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital. About 10 percent of people with major depression die of suicide. About 15 percent of people with bipolar disorder die from suicide.
In general, mental illness first appears when people are in their teens or 20s. Sometimes, however, friends and families of people with a milder form of bipolar disorder — one that does not induce psychotic behavior — can mistake their condition for depression, Payne said. People who experience milder manic episodes— called hypomania — can seem energetic and productive, rather than deranged.
It’s also common for people with mental illness to suffer from multiple conditions, such as bipolar disorder and panic disorder, Lieberman said. A proportion of people with mental illness also suffer from substance abuse, as well, sometimes “self-medicating” to ease their moods.
Although drugs such as lithium can effectively treat bipolar disorders, some people with the condition are reluctant to use the medication because they feel it dulls their creativity, Payne said.

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