Washington, October 22: A new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health''s Center for Injury Research and Policy has revealed that the rate of suicide in the United States is increasing for the first time in a decade.

According to the report, the annual overall suicide rate rose by 0.7 percent that was witnessed amongst whites aged 40-64, especially in middle-aged women.

The increase in the suicide rate between 1999 and 2005 saw an annual increase with the rate rising to 2.7 percent amongst middle-aged white men as against the 3.9 percent among middle-aged women.

The revelations stand in stark contrast to the number of suicides in blacks that had decreased significantly over the study''s time period, and remained stable among Asian and Native Americans.

The researchers further studied the suicide methods across various population age groups, which revealed the use of firearms as the most dominant method followed by hanging/suffocation that accounted for 22 percent of all suicides by 2005.

“Historically, suicide prevention programs have focused on groups considered to be at highest risk—teens and young adults of both genders as well as elderly white men,” the study’s co-author Susan P. Baker, MPH said.

“This research tells us we need to refocus our resources to develop prevention programs for men and women in their middle years," she added.

The professor with the Bloomberg School''s Center for Injury Research and Policy along with colleagues Guoqing Hu, PhD, Holly Wilcox, PhD, Lawrence Wissow, MD, MPH, had analyzed data from the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) mortality reports.

The research was published online at the website of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. (ANI)