Suicide and Unintentional Poisoning Mortality Trends in the United States, 1987-2006: two Unrelated Phenomena?

The authors compared suicide & poisoning mortality trends over 2 decades in a preliminary assessment of their independence & implications for suicide misclassification. Subjects were 936,633 Americans who died between 1987-2006 & whose underlying cause of death was classified as suicide, unintentional poisoning, or injury mortality of undetermined intent. In contrast to small rate changes for suicide, the unintentional poisoning mortality rate rose more than 4-fold over the study period. The official decline in the suicide rate may have been a partial artifact of misclassification of non-elderly suicides within unintentional poisoning mortality. (52 refs.) JA