The CDC released its biannual survey of teen suicide today, and the results are mixed. Here's a look at actual suicide attempts:
Overall, suicide attempts were flat compared to 2019, which is heartening considering all the stresses of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. I would have expected to see a noticeable increase.
On the other hand, 26.3% of gay and lesbian students attempted suicide, up three points from 2019—though this is still a lower rate than in 2015.
As usual, girls were far more likely then boys to attempt suicide, 12.4% to 5.3%. However, with the exception of American Indians, differences between racial groups were fairly small:
- Asian: 7.4%
- Hispanic: 8.4%
- White: 8.9%
- Black: 10.0%
- American Indian: 20.1%
Is this really saying 9% of of high school teens (and 12.4% of girls) attempted suicide? If so, I don't believe this one bit. It seems fantastical that more than one out of every ten girls attempted suicide.
The CDC survey is exactly that, a survey. They survey high school students. The methodology and results are clearly stated. It is quite possible that high school students are not honest in their self reporting. It's also possible they are or even that they under report. My hunch, stress hunch, is that self reporting from high school students should be taken with a grain of salt. But that said, why do you doubt it ? What are you basing this on ? I'm curious.
Just seems way too big a number. Consider a high school with 2,000 students, half are girls. That means that EACH YEAR, 124 girls attempt suicide. Even if less then 10% of those attempts were successful, that means that that high school has 10 or so girls that kill themselves every year. And tat's just the girls. Has any school ever had 10 girls commit suicide in one year? Let alone every school, year after year?
The survey asked about both serious thoughts about suicide and suicide attempts, and I wonder how many teens categorize planning as an attempt. I agree that it seems unreasonable to think that 10% of teen girls are actually taking physical actions that could result in death if not interrupted in some way (swallowing pills, pointing a loaded weapon at themselves, etc.). But I can believe that 10% at some point figure out which bottle of pills they'd use.
Agreed.
Oregon started collecting data on teen suicide attempts back in 1988[1]. For 15-17 year olds, the rate of suicide attempts from 1988 through 1993 was 0.370%. If you count actual suicides at attempts, that raises the rate to 0.383%. The rate for 10-14 year olds was lower.
The suicide rate has trended up a bit over the years[2], but not enough to suggest a drastic increase in suicide attempts, so I doubt that suicide attempts actually increased from 0.37% to 9%. Unlike Atticus, I see no reason to think that the Oregon data is more believable than the recent CDC data, but I suspect that one of them is wrong.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00036910.htm
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db398-H.pdf
It's "attempts", not successes. And I'd say 1 out of 10 girls lowballs the actual number.
Do they define what 'attempts' are? Is an attempt just staring at the bottle of tylenol and thinking about taking the whole thing, or must it be more than that?
So you think more than 12.4% of highs school girls have actually attempted suicide in the last 12 months? I think it closer to 0.124%
You seem to have led a happy life.
I think I've led a pretty normal normal. I certainly pity anyone who lives a life in which 12.4% of high school girls attempt suicide each year. Fortunately, I don't think that is the case for anyone.
*Normal life
I'm equally skeptical that more than 1/4 of gay teens did. That just seems far too large.
The CDC survey is exactly that, a survey. They survey high school students. The methodology and results are clearly stated. It is quite possible that high school students are not honest in their self reporting. It's also possible they are or even that they under report. My hunch, stress hunch, is that self reporting from high school students should be taken with a grain of salt. But that said, why do you doubt it ? What are you basing this on ? I'm curious.
Bad survey but results it shows aren’t surprising. Kids are resilient. Ukrainian teenagers aren’t all milking themselves either.
These numbers are shocking.
The reporting injuries due to suicide attempt ca. 3 to 4x lower than those reported attempts. Actually number of suicides much lower, though it is the second leading cause of teen death.
The suicide rate is ca. 14 per 100,000.
According to the American Society for Prevention of Suicide....but the rate is as high or higher for the age group breakdown--so something is off a bit in the stats.
https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
Trends for teen suicidality and depression look really bad when the start point is 2007 or 2009. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data goes back to 1991. A lot of the recent rise in suicidality looks like a return to levels of the 1990s. The "sadness" measure has spiked up in recent years. You can find the trends going back to 1991 here: https://yrbs-explorer.services.cdc.gov/#/
According to that high school students who seriously considered suicide is less than 20%,
https://yrbs-explorer.services.cdc.gov/#/graphs?questionCode=H26&topicCode=C01&location=XX&year=2019
overall, but some states are higher than others. The winner may be California, 26.6%.
The point here is 'seriously considered'.
I think there may be an element of teen drama involved in answering this question.
Yeah, way over-stated. You ask kids these two questions:
During the past 12 months, did you ever seriously consider attempting suicide?
During the past 12 months, how many times did you actually attempt suicide?
Although the research design is ok, the results don't square with observed results (as pointed out by others). As the parent of two girls at two different schools, and with a pediatrician spouse, there is only one suicide among our broadly associated teen population in the last 5 years.
One aspect to take into consideration ... a lot of the disaffected groups have effectively endorsed suicide - or at least talking about it - as part of the group identity. Among gender questioning kids, there is teen-to-teen advice that they should threaten suicide in order to gain access to hormones etc (and that is furthered with the silly "you must affirm/transition of your child will commit suicide"). Kevin is comparing the general teen population against "Gay" ... not sure how much this sort of contamination would affect the Gay population as a whole, but its possible that the self-reporting in this population is much higher than the actual rate.
Agreed, this is nonsense. There's a recent survey claiming that over 50% of "LGBTQ" young people have considered suicide. None of this passes the smell test.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/The-Trevor-Project-National-Survey-Results-2021.pdf
Apologies, I got that wrong. It's over 50% of "transgender and nonbinary" young people, not "LGBTQ."
In the past, suicide has actually gone *down* during major crises. For instance, in the week after the JFK Assassination, there were no suicides in 29 US cities the week after the assassination; there was a 10% reduction in suicides the week after the Challenger disaster, and a 50% reduction in calls to crisis support lines the week after 9/11). This is also seen during wars; during WWII, the US had one of its lowest yearly rates of suicide (1942), and a 15% reduction in the UK, and a 30% reduction in the US. However, all of these numbers reverted to means in the time after the crisis.
I think there is going to be a spike in the next two years.