The homicide rate for older teens in the United States rose to its highest in nearly 25 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suicide rate for adults in their early 20s was the highest in more than 50 years. government investigators said Thursday.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed the numbers of homicide and suicide in people between the ages of 10 and 24 between 2001 and 2021.
The increase is alarming and “reflects a mental health crisis among young people and the need for a series of policy changes,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies death trends in the United States and does not participated in the CDC report.
Experts cited several possible reasons for the increases, including higher rates of depression, limited availability of health services and the number of guns in homes in the country.
Guns were used in 54% of suicides and 93% of homicides in that age group in 2021, the most recent year for which there were statistics.
“Imagine a teenager sitting in her bedroom feeling hopeless and impulsively making a decision to kill herself,” Woolf said. If she has access to a weapon, she noted, “it’s game over.”
Suicide and homicide were the second and third leading causes of death for people ages 10 to 24, behind a category of accidental deaths that includes motor vehicle crashes, falls, drowning and overdoses.
Other researchers have grouped the data by method of death and concluded that guns are now the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
Earlier this year, Woolf and other researchers analyzing the CDC data identified a dramatic increase in the death rate of children and adolescents early in the pandemic, identifying suicide and homicide as important factors.
Suicide rates in children and adolescents were already on the rise before COVID-19, but they spiked at the start of the pandemic. Although it might be difficult to explain why, isolation during COVID-19 lockdowns could be a factor, explained Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, a psychiatrist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
“There is a misconception that if you talk to young people about depression, they will become depressed. The policy of not talking and not asking about depression is not effective,” Trivedi explained. “The sooner we can identify those who need help, the more options we have to save lives.”
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