Teen Suicides Increased During the Pandemic

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by CNN.

The number of suicides among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 increased in five states during the pandemic, according to research looking at 14 states published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Data from Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Virginia and California also showed an increase in the proportion of adolescent deaths by suicide relative to suicides by people of all ages, the authors found. Conversely, Montana had a decrease in adolescent suicides and the proportion of adolescent deaths by suicide during the pandemic, while Alaska had a decrease in proportion only, the research found.

Researchers partnered with public health departments in 14 states and looked into death certificate data on more than 85,000 people who died by suicide. The authors compared two time periods: 2015 to 2019 and 2020, which is the pandemic year they analyzed.

When data were aggregated across all 14 states, the proportion of overall suicides among adolescents increased during the pandemic.

The findings highlight the need to pay attention to any behaviors adolescents show that can signal suicidal thoughts, said Marie-Laure Charpignon, the first author of the study and a doctoral student in statistics at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We’re all kind of blind within our own families or households,” she added. Sometimes “we see what we want to see, or what we have the opportunity to see in the limited amount of time we have.”

Source: CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/25/health/teen-suicide-increase-pandemic-study-wellness/index.html