Publications - Suicide

The U.S. surgeon general issues a stark warning about the state of youth mental health, by L. Carol Ritchie, NPR, Dec 7 2021.

“U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has a warning about the mental health of young people.  Murthy told Morning Edition that children and young adults were already facing a mental health crisis before the coronavirus pandemic began: One in three high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, a 40% increase from 2009 to 2019, he said. Suicide rates went up during that time by 57% among youth ages 10 to 24. During the pandemic, rates of anxiety and depression have increased, he said.  The pandemic has made the issues behind the mental health crisis only worse, he said. ”

The pandemic worsened young people’s mental health crisis., by Matt Richtel, The New York Times, Dec 7 2021.

“The United States surgeon general on Tuesday warned that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the coronavirus pandemic.  The report cited significant increases in self-reports of depression, anxiety and emergency-room visits for mental health challenges. In the United States, emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared with the same period in 2019. The figure rose 4 percent for boys.  Globally, symptoms of anxiety and depression doubled during the pandemic, the report noted. But mental health issues were already on the rise in the United States, with emergency room visits related to depression, anxiety and related issues up 28 percent between 2011 and 2015. ”

The pandemic worsened young people’s mental health crisis., by Matt Richtel, The New York Times, Dec 7 2021.

“The United States surgeon general on Tuesday warned that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the coronavirus pandemic.  The report cited significant increases in self-reports of depression, anxiety and emergency-room visits for mental health challenges. In the United States, emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared with the same period in 2019. The figure rose 4 percent for boys.  Globally, symptoms of anxiety and depression doubled during the pandemic, the report noted. But mental health issues were already on the rise in the United States, with emergency room visits related to depression, anxiety and related issues up 28 percent between 2011 and 2015. ”

Why It’s So Hard to Find a Therapist Who Takes Insurance, by Andrea Petersen, The Wall Street Journal, Oct 5 2021.

“Finding a therapist who takes insurance was tough before the pandemic. Now, therapists and patients say, an increase in the need for mental-health care is making the search even harder. Especially in big cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., demand for mental-health care is so strong that many experienced therapists don’t accept any insurance plans, they say. They can easily fill their practices with patients who would pay out of pocket, they add. Therapists who do take insurance are often booked up. And in many smaller towns and rural areas, there are few mental-health professionals at all. Finding a provider who takes insurance, or lowering your rates in other ways, is possible but often takes legwork that can be draining when you are already grappling with mental-health issues. About 34% of people with private insurance said they had difficulty finding a therapist who would accept their coverage, according to a 2016 survey—the most recent data available—of more than 3,100 participants conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a national mental-health advocacy group. By comparison, 9% said they had difficulty finding an in-network primary-care provider.  Office visits to mental-health providers are more than five times more likely to be out of network than are visits to primary-care providers, according to a 2019 report from Milliman, a consulting firm, which analyzed insurance-claims data. In 2017, 17.2% of mental-health office visits were out of network, compared with 3.2% of primary-care visits, the Milliman report found. ”

Suicide rate among active duty service members increased by 41% between 2015 and 2020, by Alex Marquardt and Ellie Kaufman, CNN, Sep 30 2021.

“The suicide rate among active duty service members in the US military increased by 41.4% in the five years from 2015 to 2020, according to data provided in the annual report from the Department of Defense on suicide in the military.  The suicide rate among active duty service members increased by 9.1% in 2020, according to data from the report, which was released Thursday. From 2018 to 2020, it rose 15.3%.  The suicide rate among reserve members of the US military went up by 19.2% in 2020, but the rate has overall gone down since 2018, the report shows. The suicide rate among National Guard members increased by 31.7% in 2020, but has also gone down overall since 2018.  Some 580 members of the military, among active duty, reserves and National Guard, died by suicide in 2020. The report also shows 202 military family members died by suicide in 2019. ”

How to Detect Your Child’s Emotional Distress Before the School’s AI Does, by Julie Jargon, The Wall Street Journal, Sep 18 2021.

“School districts use artificial-intelligence software that can scan student communications and web searches on school-issued devices—and even devices that are logged in via school networks—for signs of suicidal ideation, violence against fellow students, bullying and more. Included in the scans are emails and chats between friends, as well as student musings composed in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Many school districts have used monitoring software over the past three years to prevent school shootings, but it has evolved to become a tool to spot a range of mental-health issues, including anxiety, depression and eating disorders. School administrators say such surveillance is more important than ever as students return to the classroom after 18 months of pandemic-related stress, uncertainty and loss. Critics say it raises questions about privacy, misuse and students’ ability to express feelings freely or search for answers. ”

How A Hospital And A School District Teamed Up To Help Kids In Emotional Crisis, by Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, Jun 11 2021.

“The concerning rise in mental health issues noticed by school administrators mirrors national trends. Roughly 1 in 5 U.S. children meet criteria for a mental health disorder, and the rate of suicide attempts among youth has risen over the past decade, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Around the country, most kids who have mental health issues don't get treatment. There's a shortage of providers who work with children and it can take months to get an appointment.  "The wait times on an average to see a mental health specialist on an emergency basis is somewhere between two to three months, and for regular basis is up to 12 months, which is an unacceptable wait time," says Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Nationwide Children's Hospital. ”

Suicides Rise in Black Population During COVID-19 Pandemic, by Karen Blum, John Hopkins Medicine, Apr 20 2021.

“Early in the pandemic, there were worries among mental health professionals that COVID-19’s impacts on people’s isolation, stress and finances — coupled with Americans’ unprecedented purchases of guns — would create a perfect storm toward a surge of suicides, says psychiatrist Paul Nestadt. After all, spikes in suicide rates were documented during the 1889 and 1918 flu pandemics, as well as among the elderly in Hong Kong after the 2003 SARS outbreak. A recent study directed by Nestadt analyzing suicides among Maryland residents during the first six months of the year yielded some surprising findings. Instead of a peak in suicides during the lockdown of spring 2020, the investigation found an overall decrease in suicides compared with the previous three years’ numbers. However, once investigators studied suicide deaths by race, they found that suicides among white residents decreased by 45% during early March to early May, while suicides among Black residents increased by 94% in the same time frame. These results were published as a research letter in JAMA Psychiatry. “This is obviously concerning, and it serves as a reminder that when we aggregate all of our data — thinking the population is homogeneous — we miss especially vulnerable populations,” says Nestadt, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Black Marylanders were much more severely affected by the pandemic in terms of both infection rate and fatalities, he says. It’s possible that other populations hit hard by COVID-19 — such as the Latino community, single mothers balancing work and child care, and older residents — may also have suffered greater distress as marked by suicide, though his dataset was too limited to make those determinations. ”

Make Space, Listen, Offer Hope: How To Help A Child At Risk Of Suicide, by Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, Feb 2 2021.

“As the coronavirus pandemic has worsened the mental health of kids, more families are dealing with their children feeling anxious and depressed and thinking about and even attempting suicide. But mental health professionals say that suicide is preventable and that parents and family members can play an important role.  It's hard work that requires parents to listen to their children, acknowledge their struggles and help them find a way out of their darkness. And in the long run, it calls for creating a home environment where kids feel safe sharing their emotional lives and where families solve problems together. ”

The Pandemic Has Researchers Worried About Teen Suicide, by Anya Kamenetz, NPR, Sep 10 2020.

“Teen and youth anxiety and depression are getting worse since COVID lockdowns began in March, early studies suggest, and many experts say they fear a corresponding increase in youth suicide. At the end of June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed Americans on their mental health. They found symptoms of anxiety and depression were up sharply across the board between March and June, compared with the same time the previous year. And young people seemed to be the hardest-hit of any group. Almost 11 percent of all respondents to that survey said they had "seriously considered" suicide in the past 30 days. For those ages 18 to 24, the number was 1 in 4 — more than twice as high. ”

World Suicide Prevention Day: Here's how to help, by Sandee LaMotte, CNN Health, Sep 10 2020.

“Every 40 seconds, someone in the world takes their own life. That's at least 800,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and the numbers are rising in some parts of the world. In the United States alone, suicide rates have increased by 35% between 1999 and 2018. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls suicide a "growing public health problem." ”

The Crisis in Youth Suicide, by Jane E. Brody, New York Times, Dec 2 2019.

“Too often, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide, especially among the young, become family secrets that are not investigated and dealt with in ways that might protect others from a similar fate. ”

Can Three Numbers Stem the Tide of American Suicides?, by Greg Miller, The Atlantic, Sep 23 2019.

“Suicide hotlines are based on the simple idea that a conversation with a sympathetic stranger can save a life. Historically, most suicide hotlines have been run by volunteers without advanced degrees in counseling or related fields, and there’s research to suggest that nonexperts are at least as effective, if not more so, than professionals at helping suicidal callers. [...]   “The hurdle we’ve always had is getting people to know how to find us,” says Dwight Holton, the CEO of Lines for Life, a Lifeline call center based in Portland, Oregon.That might soon change. The Federal Communications Commission recently recommended making it easier to reach the Lifeline, by dialing 988 instead of the more cumbersome current 10-digit number. The thinking is that someone in the midst of a crisis is more likely to remember—and dial—a shorter number. ”

Living near a gun shop or in a rural area puts you at higher risk for suicide, study says, by Jen Christensen, CNN, Sep 6 2019.

“The suicide rate rose 41% in the United States from 1999 to 2016, and the people at the highest risk have a few factors in common, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Friday.  Men had higher suicide rates. Areas with the highest risk were in Western states, and in rural areas. Or, in a city, if there was a gun shop in the neighborhood. ”

HRC Observes National Suicide Prevention Awarness Month 2019, by HRC Staff, Human Rights Campaign, Sep 1 2019.

“This September, HRC observes National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, reaffirming our commitment to supporting the well-being of LGBTQ youth who often feel alone or hopeless simply because of who they are.  ”