Among U.S. states, New York’s suicide rate is the lowest. How’s that?

“I just snapped” is how Jessica Lioy describes her attempt in April to kill herself. Compared with the national rate of 14 suicides per 100,000 people in 2017, New York’s was just 8.1, the lowest suicide rate in the nation. And upstate New York, often portrayed as bleak and cold, is famously disparaged in the Broadway musical “A Chorus Line” with the comment that “to commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant.” Experts say there’s no easy explanation for the state’s lowest-in-the-nation rate. “I can’t tell you why,” said Dr. Jay Carruthers, a psychiatrist who is the director of suicide prevention at the New York State Office of Mental Health. “If your spouse passes away or you come down with a chronic condition and no one is checking on you and you have access to firearms,” Reed said, “life may not seem like worth living.” Intervention helps "force you" to move forward New York’s efforts to prevent suicides include conducting a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of a brief intervention program developed in Switzerland for people who have attempted suicide — because they are at risk for trying again.