OVER 40,000 Americans committed suicide in 2012: approximately one death every 13 minutes. Between 2005 and 2012 the annual suicide rate increased 18% from 11 to 13 in every 100,000 people, with guns used in about half of all incidents. And as our chart above shows, it is highest in Alaska, Wyoming and Montana, perhaps because people in these states own a lot of guns—which are a more effective means of taking your own life than pills. What drives people to self-destruction? Those who suffer from depression are, unsurprisingly, most at risk. But the suicide rate also rises when times are hard: during the Depression it jumped to a record 19 deaths per 100,000. Making it harder to end your life might help to reduce the number of suicides. After Britain switched to blister packs in 1998, which require you to punch pills out one by one, deaths from overdoses of paracetamol (the active ingredient in Tylenol) dropped 44% in 11 years.

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