For the second year in a row, middle-aged adults have enregistered the hightest suicide rate in the country, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most recent figures made public, from 2007, reveal that the 45-to-54 age group had a suicide rate of 17.6 per every 100,000 people.
The second highest was the 75-to-84 age range, with a rate of 16.4, followed by those between 35 and 44, with 16.3.

Dr Paula Clayton, the medical director of the American Fondation for Suicide Prevention said the rise in suicide among the Americans born in the 1950s and 1960s was probably a result of factors including easier access to guns and prescription drugs and what may be a higher incidence of depression.