Unlocking a Brain Characteristic That Raises Suicide Risk |
Suicide is one of the greatest public health challenges in the United States and worldwide, with nearly 50,000 annual deaths attributed to it in the US alone. That means someone dies by suicide at a rate of every 11 minutes in the United States, and the rate has overall been rising significantly over the past 25 years. Though many psychological and socioeconomic risk factors continue to be identified, physiological correlates have been harder to come by. Why are some people more likely to be at risk for suicide than others, even as they may suffer from similar levels of depression? Might it be associated with something measurable in their brain? Now, recent research has helped provide a new clue: a