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Suicide rates are tricky since mental health can have long lasting issues and the societal changes from lockdown will have even longer term effects. How do you attribute a suicide 2 years from now to depression that started during COVID? It’s going to be interesting seeing how the psychology field approaches this.

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While that's true, a solid chunk (1/3) of suicides are based on pretty short cycles. That's why preventing a suicide is so valuable - 1/3 people you prevent are no more likely to attempt suicide again than a random person on the street. And that's without any psychological intervention. With therapy, that number gets even higher.

This is indeed an open question, and it's one we're going to need to address over the expected lifetimes of every single person who's living through COVID. We'll also need to address it for COVID "long-haulers," given that individuals with severely diminished qualities of life are a high-risk suicide group.

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