Such efforts are particularly needed at the current moment because American suicide rates are on the rise. “U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High,” read an August 2016 New York Times headline, above an article that detailed how “suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years… the increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986.” Subsequent research suggested that rates were particularly high in rural areas of the United States.
