If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or Crisis text line by texting HOME to 741741.
The homicide rate among older American teenagers hit its highest level in nearly 25 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suicide rate among adults in their early 20s was the worst in more than 50 years, government researchers said Thursday.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report examined homicide and suicide rates among 10 to 24 year olds from 2001 to 2021.
The increase is alarming and “reflects a crisis in youth mental health and the need for a number of policy changes”, said Dr Steven Woolf, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies mortality trends in the United States and was not involved in the CDC report. .
Experts have cited several possible reasons for the increases, including higher rates of depression, limited availability of mental health services and the number of guns in American homes.
Firearms were used in 54% of suicides and 93% of homicides in this age group in 2021, the most recent year for which statistics were available.
“Imagine a teenager sitting in his bedroom, desperate and making the decision, impulsively, to kill himself,” Woolf said. If they have access to a firearm, “it’s game over”.
Suicide and homicide were the second and third leading causes of death among 10- to 24-year-olds, after a category of accidental deaths that includes traffic accidents, falls, drownings and overdoses. Other researchers grouped the data by method of death and concluded that guns are now the biggest killer of American children.
Earlier this year, Woolf and other researchers reviewing CDC data noted dramatic increases overall child and adolescent mortality rates early in the pandemic, and found that suicide and homicide were important factors.
The report also found:
- Suicide and homicide death rates remained much higher among older teens and young adults than among 10- to 14-year-olds.
- In 2021, there were approximately 2,900 suicides among young people aged 10 to 19 and 4,200 among those aged 20 to 24. About 3,000 homicide deaths have been reported in the younger age group and nearly 3,900 in adults in their early twenties.
- The homicide death rate fell from 8.9 deaths per 100,000 adolescents aged 15 to 19 in 2019 to 12.3 in 2020. It fell to 12.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2021, the highest since 1997, according to CDC data.
- Homicide deaths became more common than suicide deaths among 15-19 year olds, while suicide was more common in younger and older age groups.
- While large increases have been seen in homicide rates among black and Hispanic youth in the United States, there have been no significant increases for their white counterparts, according to other CDC data.
- Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the homicide death rate jumped 34% from 2019 to 2020, from 13.4 per 100,000 to 18 per 100,000. It remained stable in 2021, but the suicide rate has increased enough in 2021 – to 19.4 per 100,000 – to surpass the homicide rate.
Suicide death rates among children and adolescents were increasing before COVID-19, but they jumped at the start of the pandemic. Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, a psychiatrist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said the reasons can be difficult to identify, but isolation during COVID-19 shutdowns could be a factor.
“There’s a misperception that if you talk to young people about depression, they’re going to get depressed. A don’t ask, don’t tell policy for depression is not effective,” Trivedi said. “The sooner we can identify those who need help, the better chance we have of saving lives.”
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