White women are three times more likely to commit suicide than black women. Researchers recently examined the medical records of female suicide victims from North Carolina between 1989 and 1993. They found that race was an unexpected risk factor.
The study's goal was to learn the causes of suicide, but the researchers concluded that medical and police records were too vague. Even when researchers interviewed law enforcement officers about all 177 cases of suicide in 1993, there was not enough information to fully understand the problem.
While her study cannot explain the race difference, lead author Carol Runyon, Ph.D., from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, encourages law enforcement officials to keep better track of risk factors, so other suicides may be averted.
Suicide "may have something to do with what people consider unbearable," says Henry Seiden, Ph.D., the author of Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide. "Women [in ethnic minorities] may be used to living with much lower expectations." Thus they may be less suicidal. He notes that it is much more difficult to find information on attempted suicides. It could be that white women are more successful at their attempts.
