American Girls’ Suicide Rates Rise

[Old Fuff]

Gun control advocates frequently like to merge suicides with other statistics to inflate the numbers, and either state or imply that firearms, particularly handguns, are the instrument of choice when it comes to suicide. Then of course is their slavish claim that what ever they want is, “for the children.” The following report is current, and provides some impressive (and documented) points for rebuttal.

American Girls’ Suicide Rates Rise
By GREG BLUESTEIN (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
September 06, 2007 12:09 PM EDT

ATLANTA - The suicide rate among preteen and teenage girls rose to its highest level in 15 years, and hanging surpassed guns as the preferred method, federal health officials reported Thursday.

The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests a surprising reversal in recent trends.

The biggest jump - about 76 percent - was in the suicide rate for girls ages 10-14 from 2003 to 2004. There were 94 suicides in that age group in 2004, compared to 56 in 2003. That's a rate of fewer than one per 100,000 population.

Suicide rates among all American young people, ages 10 to 24, fell 28 percent from 1990-2003. But in 2004 it shot back up, driven largely by increases among females aged 10-19 and males aged 15-19.

"In surveillance speak, this is a dramatic and huge increase," said Dr. Ileana Arias, director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Overall, suicide was the third leading cause of death among young Americans in 2004, accounting for 4,599 deaths. It is surpassed by only car crashes and homicide, Arias said.

The study also documented a change in suicide method. In 1990, guns accounted for more than half of all suicides among young females. By 2004, though, death by hanging and suffocation became the most common suicide method. It accounted for about 71 percent of all suicides in girls aged 10-14, 49 percent among those aged 15-19 and 34 percent between 20-24.

"While we can't say (hanging) is a trend yet, we are confident that's an unusually high number in 2004," said Dr. Keri Lubell, a CDC behavioral scientist who was one of the lead authors of study.

The study did not analyze why hanging has become the most common suicide method, but scientists speculated it could be the most accessible method.
"It is possible that hanging and suffocation is more easily available than other methods, especially for these other groups," Arias said.

The CDC is advising health officials to consider focusing suicide-prevention programs on girls ages 10-19 and boys between 15-19 to reverse the trends. It also said the suicide methods suggest that prevention measures focused solely on restricting access to pills, weapons or other lethal means may have more limited success.

Arias said the declining use of antidepressants could be a factor in the spike. But she noted it's "not the only factor" that health officials will be studying to explain the jump. Four years ago, federal regulators warned that antidepressants seemed to raise the risk of suicidal behavior among young people, so black box warnings were put on the drug packaging.

"Suicide is a multidimensional and complex problem," she said. "As much as we'd like to attribute suicide to a single source so we can fix it, unfortunately we can't do that."

The study mentioned other factors that tend to increase the risk of suicide, including history of mental illness, alcohol and drug use, family dysfunction and relationship problems. Note that easy access to firearms in NOT listed.

---
On the Net:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/suicide
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http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20070906/46df7b40_3ca6_1552620070906307780427

 

[fletcher]

I heard this on the radio on the way home.

This particularly caught my interest:

hanging surpassed guns as the preferred method

Ban rope, sheets, clothes, and anything else you can make a noose or hang yourself from! For the children!

 

[CountGlockula]

Time to love and protect your daughters and nieces more than ever.

Sad article.

 

[davinci]

when I was in high school, in 1997 a fella hung himself. No note, just hung himself on the night before the last day of school. He was someone I knew, but we didn't hang out outside of school.

over the summer, his girlfriend hung herself. She was going to be a sophomore the next year. What a mess it was my sophomore year, the first two months were nothing but mandatory counseling sessions. Hated that mess. They even went so far as to call everyone's parents and invite them to a parent involvement meeting. It wasn't a bad idea, it got parents to ask their kids "why are they doing this?" and it started conversations with the kids that may have been being neglected.

Then, about 4 years later a woman I worked with suddenly stopped coming to work. I asked about what was going on....her son (only child) had killed himself at age 14, the woman was probably about 50 I'd guess. She came back a few weeks later long enough to gather a few things from her desk, she was crying the whole time and looked about 15 years older than she did when she left. It was a big funeral, made headlines.... lots of folks left here missing him.

Teenagers commit suicide more often than we really notice. In the past 12 years I've known of 3. two were hangings, the other I'm not sure about. I'm amazed that overdosing on meds isn't at the top of the list for girls.

All detail aside, it's important to pay attention to your teens and actually talk to them. There's no crazier time in a kid's life than their early high-school years when they're being told "it's time to start acting like an adult" but they are incapable of having a job and they still want to play and have a good time. combine that with drugs, alcohol, social influence and the decade of school they have ahead of them, not too mention hormonal imbalances and you're basically taking the bad stuff from Menopause, a mid life crisis, hangovers, every bad relationship you've ever had and throwing it all together and calling it a "teenager".

A little compassion for our youth may be in order, especially since so many are lashing out in violence against others now.

 

[ilcylic]

There's no crazier time in a kid's life than their early high-school years when they're being told "it's time to start acting like an adult" but they are incapable of having a job and they still want to play and have a good time. combine that with drugs, alcohol, social influence and the decade of school they have ahead of them, not too mention hormonal imbalances and you're basically taking the bad stuff from Menopause, a mid life crisis, hangovers, every bad relationship you've ever had and throwing it all together and calling it a "teenager".

Not to mention being locked in those internment camps they call "schools" all day.

Homeschooling. It's for the children.

 

[MeekandMild]

Not surprising. In the big Canadian suicide study a few years ago there was a small drop in gun related suicides after the ban but the compensatory rise in jumping heights more than made up for it.

 

[Hazel]

Yeah... if someone wants to commit suicide, but doesn't happen to have access to a gun, they will easily find another means to do so. It doesn't matter if you somehow manage to destroy every gun in the world; people who want to kill themselves will do so, regardless of the method. I don't know why, exactly, anyone commits suicide or why the rate is rising the way it is (I have theories, as everyone does, I'm sure, but definitely can't say anything for certain), but you need to meet something like this at the cause of the problem rather than trying to simply fight the result.

 

[Old Fuff]

M&M....

Do you know if copies of this Canadian study can be downloaded from anywhere? It wouldn't hurt to have a supporting study from another country to quote.

 

[Joe Demko]

Not to mention being locked in those internment camps they call "schools" all day.

You're a true Hero Of The Revolution. I've heard those in my profession blamed for just about everything at this board, but you came up with a new one by attributing suicide to the public school system.
Long days and many nights to you.

 

[geekWithA.45]

Statistically, there have always been gender differences in suicide methods.

Woman generall preferred pills, hanging, or jumping to gunfire, and even when gunfire is selected, women tend to shoot themselves in the chest, where men tend to shoot themselves in the head.

I would guess that hanging surpassing gunfire is primarily more due to the uptick of female suicides than any other factor.

 

[Geno]

ilcylic says:

Not to mention being locked in those internment camps they call "schools" all day. Homeschooling. It's for the children.

Amen! In the five (5) years that I was a junior high/high school principal, I had to intervene on behalf of dozens of students. Society has changed from when I graduated from high school (1979). The research points clean and clear to the idiot-box...TV and Hollywood as it relates to violence (toward others and toward self). The control-freak schools drive the nail in the coffin, and families aren't there to prevent or un-nail the coffin and save the kid.

Most suicides are not serious attempts...they are cries for help. However, we must take all as serious, because we never know which is serious and which is acting out for help. Unfortunately, most school counselors cannot do any significant counseling, because NCLB has them constantly testing and reporting useless statistics. Make no mistake about it, contemporary public schools, are for politicians' resumes, not for the children.

JMHO.

 

[alucard0822]

There are literally hundreds of things one can blame suicide on, some we can control, some we can't. I myself am 28, and I have younger siblings that represent an 8 year spread in age. I know it seems suicide is quite a bit more accepted now than it was in years past, even to the point of it bringing social notoriety and so called respect from others. Parents seem to let the TV and school teach their kids life's lessone more and more, and IMO most should be taught by the parents. Many things contribute to this, more hours spent at work, by both parents, high divorce rates where a single parent just doesn't have the time, availability of tv's and a more sedentary lifestyle. Also at the center is our increasingly liberal society where structured competition is avoided in schools, but materialistic competetition amongst peers is worse. If a student supposedly can do no wrong, and never lose, well then when it does happen they are unprepared. Increases in one method or another are not really important as we all know, someone who has their mind made up will follow through with a convienient, and either non-painful, or a method to "send a message". There is not much a desperate person can do to show their intended audience how they have failed them, or how the suicidal person has failed themselves than to be found swinging from a rope.

What we think, and how we treat teenagers can have a huge impact for the remainder of their lives, no matter how screwed up they might appear, they are mostly just looking for someone to teach them how to be a man or woman, and sometimes need all the help from us that we can give.

 

[ArmedBear]

There's something else.

Adolescent girls are increasingly being fed antidepressants (SSRI's I think, mostly). These drugs are known to have a side effect of suicidal thoughts in some adolescents.

http://www.drugrecalls.com/antidepressants.html

I think it's scary that kids are being drugged to cover up normal emotional development, and the signals that people should be listening to, to help guide us towards a happier existence.

But I think it's even scarier that they're being given drugs that can cause them to become suicidal.

 

[texas bulldog]

I'm amazed that overdosing on meds isn't at the top of the list for girls.

i believe it is atop the list of attempted suicides among girls. i've known a few of them in my lifetime. they just aren't successful because, especially amongst the young, they don't know what to take to achieve the intended result. they take something that makes them sick, which makes them throw it up, which makes them live. the upside is that they don't die. the downside is they often cause significant damage to their liver or other systems with these attempts. the ones that are serious would likely then go on to be "successful" by a different method.

 

[atblis]

Unfortunately

Tylenol is popular. Bye bye liver.

 

[esmith]

Wikipedia states that suicidal women are more likely to poisen themselves or suffocate themselves before using violent means like that. Two years ago a kid in my school killed himself by suffocation by squeezing a belt over his neck. Whether or not it was intentional i do not know but it created quite a disruption.

 

[Geno]

Anyone read the article in U.S. News & World Report, pages 62-68, April 23, 2007? It is excellent. The author, Nancy Shute, discusses the increase of "...high-octane fuel..." beverages (coffees and power drinks, etc) and the effect it is having on society. It's worth a serious read.

 

[Invalid]

There's something else.

Adolescent girls are increasingly being fed antidepressants (SSRI's I think, mostly). These drugs are known to have a side effect of suicidal thoughts in some adolescents.

http://www.drugrecalls.com/antidepressants.html

I think it's scary that kids are being drugged to cover up normal emotional development, and the signals that people should be listening to, to help guide us towards a happier existence.

But I think it's even scarier that they're being given drugs that can cause them to become suicidal.

It's shocking to see how quickly prescriptions for Zoloft, Effexor, Xanax, Prozac, etc. are handed out. My family's been taking medications for years and are completely clueless as to what it is beyond "Durr if you skip a dose you get a headache and throw up better keep on it then lol!" Teenagers especially stand in a dangerous demographic- their brain is still developing, and causing a prolonged imbalance of serotonin/norepinephrine/GABA like that at such a time seems awfully shifty. Nowadays people stay on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety regimens for years only because if they stop taking it, they experience horrible withdrawals, even risking seizures and death. Don't get me started on prescription opiates and painkillers.

Also, how is that article skewed? I mean, it doesn't address guns much at all, other than that they have been used less than rope in teen suicides. It's providing statistics- just because they mention guns and don't delve into 'why guns aren't that harmful' doesn't mean the article qualifies as an anti-gun report.

 

[telomerase]

I've heard those in my profession blamed for just about everything at this board, but you came up with a new one by attributing suicide to the public school system.

Hey, don't get mad... just quote him the stats on suicides in public-schooled kids vs. private-schooled or home-schooled. That'll set him straight.

 

[Old Fuff]

Also, how is that article skewed? I mean, it doesn't address guns much at all, other than that they have been used less than rope in teen suicides. It's providing statistics- just because they mention guns and don't delve into 'why guns aren't that harmful' doesn't mean the article qualifies as an anti-gun report.

I started this thread, and I agree with you – the article isn’t anti gun. That’s what‘s important about it.

The gun-control crowd consistently preach that guns are a cause of suicide, simply because they exist and are available. Others either say or imply that firearms are the principal method used to commit suicide, and of course they add suicides (sometimes all of them) to pad other statistics purporting to represent the number of people killed by firearms each year. When they can link suicides to any of the “for the children” issues they bring up, their in hog heaven.

This article, backed by a scientific study by the U.S. Government’s Center For Disease Control (CDC), debunks their position, and even says that:

The CDC is advising health officials to consider focusing suicide-prevention programs on girls ages 10-19 and boys between 15-19 to reverse the trends. It also said the suicide methods suggest that prevention measures focused solely on restricting access to pills, weapons or other lethal means may have more limited success.

And:

"Suicide is a multidimensional and complex problem," she said. "As much as we'd like to attribute suicide to a single source so we can fix it, unfortunately we can't do that."

This isn't what anti-gunner's are going to want to read, and that why the article (and the CDC study) are important to us.

 

[benEzra]

You're a true Hero Of The Revolution. I've heard those in my profession blamed for just about everything at this board, but you came up with a new one by attributing suicide to the public school system.
Long days and many nights to you.

Joe, it's not true of all schools, and certainly the teachers are not IMHO the ones at fault, but many schools have become amazingly stressful.

Our daughter was in KINDERGARTEN last year and was bringing home 2 to 3 hours of homework a night. She developed symptoms of acid reflux and some neurologic symptoms from stress, and she's one of the good students (reads on a 3rd-4th grade level), well liked, athletic, and doesn't get crap from bullies. The cause? Her school got onto one of the No Child Left Behind act's "left behind" lists, so the powers that be decided that working the kids to pieces, scaling back recess, and constantly teaching to the test was The Thing To Do. (And yes, we've since pulled her out of that environment, and she's now thriving.)

I can't imagine what it must be like for the adolescent who is abused by bullies, struggles academically, and lacks a supportive home environment.

 

[geekWithA.45]

Suicide 101:

An undergraduate level psych primer on suicide, current as of the late 80's, rendered from my 'ol college notebook:


*Suicidal thoughts: No biggie...everyone has them, every now and then. It's part of the human condition, and often motivated as a side thought to the fundamental human question #4"what's it like to be dead?"

Sidebar: Basic human questions:
----------------------------
1) Who the heck am I?
1a) Who the heck are you?
2) What the heck am I doing here?
3) Where is my One True Love?
4) What's it like to be dead?
5) What's the deal with God
5A) where's that rat hiding out?
----------------------

*Suicidal ideation: Distinguished from suicidal thought both by its frequency, and by it beginning to take the form and shape of a -plan-. A person in a state of suicidal ideation will make tentative choices (Pills? Shoot? Jump?) and will start to contemplate how he or she can assemble the required gear.

*Suicidal gesture: Gestures are pleas for attention and help, not death. "Failed suicide attempts" are most often suicidal gestures that work as planned. (ie: take a bunch of pills 10 minutes before you know the family will return home, that sort of thing) Suicidal gestures that do -not- go according to plan results in a successful suicide.

*Suicide attempt: An attempt at suicide whose purpose is to achieve death. People serious about ending it all do so in unambiguous ways that are more likely to inflict irreparable fatal damage. They arrange significant privacy, perhaps by traveling far into the woods where they are unlikely to be found or stumbled upon. They tend to leave notes more frequently than those engaged in gestures, (though gestures often write notes as well)

*Hesitation marks: Additional cuts/stabs/gunshots/etc, and so forth found on or near the body or person. These are pretty frequently found, and aren't as useful as one might think in terms of distinguishing a person who is making a gesture vs. a serious bid for death. They are the result of our normal, ingrained habit of not damaging ourselves, and also a function of anatomical ignorance.

Warning Signs:

* Sometimes, they flat out tell you. Perhaps not loudly, and perhaps it's laughed off as a joke, but they flat out tell you more than folks would think

* Indirect and veiled verbal or nonverbal references

* The giving away of treasured possessions

* The sudden indulgence in physical pleasures, or the sudden active fulfillment of lifelong desires (eg: extravagant and budget busting trips/vacations without regard to financial consequences)

* Certain categories of folk are at higher risk: the aged, the misfit, the chronically depressed (note: depressed people are at the highest risk not at rock bottom, but shortly after they come around the bend, and muster enough energy and enthusiasm for the task)

* Substance abuse is often a factor...the dis inhibiting effect opens the path

 

[walking arsenal]

I cant find it now. But years ago in LEO school we read a study on how people that shoot themselves in many cases end up just messing themselves up because they flinch just before they squeeze the trigger.

Hangings were popular because it gives the family something to bury.

Not to mention being locked in those internment camps they call "schools" all day.

I would wager that has a lot to do with it. Did at my high school, depression among students went up after we moved from the old one (open campus) to the new one (closed campus). The new one was designed by a company that typically designs prisons.

 

[Nolo]

I didn't know dolls could commit suicide...

 

[CTPistol]

homeschooling - very, very odd.

The homeschooled kids I know in the 5-10yr old range are the most socially challenged, scared kids I have ever met.

It might be trendy, but I have seen NOTHING good about it. It seems many of the parents are doing it for themselves, not the kids. They think they are superior, caring parents but they are often raising social freaks.