America's Greatest Suicide Problem: A Study of Over 500 Cases In San Diego

This article is based on the results of a study of over five hundred suicides in San Diego, California, which occurred from January, 1911 to January, 1927. The charts are made up of the statistics of fifteen years, 1911 to 1926, while the findings of the year of 1926 have been added separately, because they do not belong to the original investigation.

The whole West Coast has a suicide rate which is twice that of the middle Atlantic Coast, while the city of San Diego has the highest suicide rate in the United States and has held that questionable distinction for the past fifteen years. Those who have heard of the beauty of San Diego's location and surroundings, the charm of its great park, and the nearly absolute perfection of its climate will wonder, undoubtedly, why such a condition exists, and if they reach any conclusion it will be, perhaps, that it is because of the great number of invalids who come out here, hoping to get well and who succeed only in being disappointed.

For the first five years of this study—that is from 1911 to 1916 —this seemed to hold good, as 60 per cent of the cases were nonresident in San Diego, though of these one-third were resident in California. The second five years—1916 to 1921—only 30 per cent were non-resident in San Diego, and again one-third of these were resident in the state. During the last five years only twenty-five per cent of the suicides were non-resident to the city and state, and still San Diego has maintained the highest rate in our country. During the past five years more than 20 per cent of the suicides had lived in California over ten years. In New York City with its great group of non-residents, its sick, its poverty and squalor, its misery and crime, one would expect a very high suicide rate, and yet its rate is not half that of San Diego. Obviously then we have to look further for a satisfactory explanation of this rather peculiar phenomenon.