Counties with more insurance, internet and income have fewer suicides

**One person dies by suicide in the United States an average of every 11
minutes.**

CDC Vital Signs takes one health threat at a time and reports what can be
done about it. The finding in this issue is about places rather than people.

What the counties show

**Higher levels of health insurance, home internet, and income in counties
may play a role in reducing the risk of suicide.**

Three county-level characteristics, and only one of them is obviously about
mental health.

Insurance is the direct one: coverage is what makes treatment reachable.

Income is the familiar one, and it operates through everything — housing,
stability, debt, the ability to take time off.

Home internet is the surprising one. In a country where a great deal of
mental health care now happens by telehealth, and where crisis services are
reached online as well as by phone, connectivity is access. A county without
broadband is a county where a whole category of help does not arrive.

Why county-level matters

Suicide prevention is usually framed as an individual matter — recognise the
signs, ask the question, know the number. That work is necessary and it places
the responsibility on whoever happens to be nearby.

A finding at county level points somewhere else: at insurance coverage,
broadband and income, which are policy decisions rather than personal ones,
and which can be changed for everybody at once.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vital Signs.