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A/E deliverable: suicide A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows architects and engineers have the fifth highest suicide rate among 22 occupations.
By RICHARD MASSEY Managing Editor
Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. What makes the CDC report groundbreaking is that for the first time, occupation codes – hashed out by a team of six scientists – were used to cat- egorize the data contained in the National Violent Death Reporting System, or NVDRS. As the new coding system brings shape to suicide rates by oc- cupation, the CDC now has a better understanding of where the biggest problems are. “We noticed there was a gap in the suicide literature by occupation.” “We noticed there was a gap in the suicide litera- ture by occupation,” says lead report author Wendy McIntosh. While the rates were studied, the cause for the rates was not.
A report recently issued by the Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention sheds light on a concerning statistic for the A/E industry – among the 22 occupations studied, architecture and engi- neering has the fifth highest rate of suicide at 32.2 per 100,000 population. Right at double the national rate of 16.1 per 100,000 population, the data for architects and en- gineers show that 96 percent of suicides are among males, and that 34 percent are between the ages of 35 and 54. Overall, the study shows that farming, fishing, and forestry, at 84.5, has the highest sui- cide rate, while education and library, at 7.5, has the lowest rate. The eight-month study was based on information culled from 12,312 suicides in 17 states from 2012. The data is in the National Violent Death Report- ing System, a CDC system that collects information from death certificates, coroners, law enforcement, and toxicologists. States included in the study were
Report Co- author, Erica Spies, CDC
Report Co- author, Wendy McIntosh, CDC
THE ZWEIG LETTER October 24, 201
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