Midlife Crisis
Or perhaps people who are happier live longer, and this is responsible for a growing percentage of happy older people. Or, he says, maybe people have seen others their age die and they value more their own remaining years.The report is to be published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
Last December, government researchers reported a big increase in suicides among middle-aged people in the United States. They looked at injury-related death rates by age group from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand four. They found that suicide increased almost twenty percent among people ages forty-five to fifty-four. No one is sure why.
By comparison, rates generally fell for those sixty-five and older. And for people twenty to twenty-nine the suicide rate was nearly unchanged.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the findings are subject to some limitations. For example, accidental drug poisonings might sometimes be mistaken for suicides. Over all, suicides in the United States increased four percent from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand four. That year thirty-two thousand four hundred people took their own lives.
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快乐的人长寿，或许这也能解释快乐的长者比例增加的现象。他说，又或者可能是人们看到年龄相仿的朋友去世，于是就更加重视他们自己剩余的人生岁月。这份报告在《社会科学与医学》杂志上发表。
去年12月，政府研究人员报道了在美国中年人自杀的人数剧增。他们分年龄组研究了从1999年到2004年间与伤害相关的死亡率。他们发现，在45岁至54岁的人中，自杀增加人数占整个调查群体的20%。没有人确定究竟是什么原因。
相对来说，这个比率通常会在那些65岁或更年长的老年人中下降。对于20岁至29岁的人群来说，这个比率几乎没有变化。
来自疾病控制与预防中心的报告指出，这项调查中的发现受到一些局限性的影响。比如说，有时意外的药物中毒也可能被误认为是自杀。总的来讲，从1999到2004年，美国的自杀数字增长了4%。那些年共有32,400人自杀。