Giving Compass' Take:

• Suicide accounts for 60% of the country’s gun deaths. This Atlantic piece explores the data and what it says about the mental health crisis in our country.

• What role can philanthropy play in reducing suicides in general? Which counseling programs would have the most impact?

• Here's a community engagement toolkit when it comes to preventing suicide.

In 2015 and 2016, Americans faced an alarming statistic: After a couple of decades of overall decline, major data centers reported a sharp uptick of crime in big cities. Donald Trump spoke with dystopian foreboding in his 2016 inaugural address about the “American carnage” wreaking havoc in the country’s metropolises; earlier, at one campaign event, he asserted that “places like Afghanistan” were safer than American cities, where “you get shot walking down the street.”

In the years since, research has painted a much different picture—one that’s uplifting in some ways and dark in others. This week, a pair of crime and mortality reports circling in the news emphasizes that urban violence is decreasing but American cities still face “carnage” of an entirely different sort.

Read the full article on suicide and gun deaths by Haley Weiss at The Atlantic.