20:29

Fact-checking Trump’s claim about suicide deaths from a bad economy

In a marked low point of Donald Trump’s Monday press conference, the president argued that public health measures to slow spread of the coronavirus might have their own death toll, because the public health guidelines hurt the economy, and economic crisis leads to suicide.

The president implied that quickly ending ending restrictive health measures, in order to open the economy back up again, might avert an outbreak of suicide in the United States.

Before continuing with this post, and in case you find any of the president’s comments triggering, the number for the National Suicide Prevention hotline in the United States is: 1-800-273-8255. More information for other countries at the bottom of this post.



Tim Dickinson (@7im) Trump's comments right now may be triggering for some people.



Stick around folks. You are loved



National Suicide Prevention Hotline:

1-800-273-8255

The president said: “People get tremendous anxiety and depression. And you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death, probably, I mean definitely would be in greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.”

What does the data show?

It is reasonable to suggest that a pandemic-linked recession can increase the risk of a rise in suicides. According to research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, North America and Europe experienced 10,000 more suicides during the 2008 recession. The outbreak of Sars in Hong Kong in 2002 and 2003 also led to a “significant increase” in suicides in those aged over 65, according to 2010 research.

But experts also caution that there is no single cause of suicide.

While the figures for the mortality rate of coronavirus continues to evolve, recent research from Wuhan, China, the city where the outbreak began, indicates the mortality rate there was around 1.4%. Experts at Harvard University have projected an infection rate in the US of between 20 - 60%, meaning that while it is impossible to reliably estimate the American coronavirus death toll a reasonable scenario could result in hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

On first look, given the potentially devastating death toll directly associated with coronavirus, it appears unlikely to be matched by an increased rate in suicide, making the presidents claim almost certainly inaccurate.

