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Mental Health Experts: Teen Suicide Rates Remain Disturbingly High

By Hugh C. McBride

After two years of bad news, pediatric mental health experts are scrambling to identify causes and propose solutions for a stunning spike in the number of U.S. teens who are ending their own lives.

 
Twelve months after researchers revealed what they hoped was a one-time aberration in the nation’s annual teen suicide rate, the most recent statistics indicate that things aren’t getting much better.
 
Between 1993 and 2003, the nation’s teen suicide rate experienced a steady decline, but that positive trend ended with a stunning 18-percent spike in 2004. Experts had hoped that the data for 2005 (which was released in a Sept. 3, 2008 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association) would be more in line with the 10-year decline; when the report was released, though, the data proved to be less than encouraging.
 
An Emerging Crisis?
 
According to a Sept. 3 article on the ScienceDaily website, even though the 2005 pediatric suicide statistics addressing self-caused deaths by individuals ages 10 to 19 indicated a slight drop from the previous year’s record increase, the rate remains troublingly higher than experts had anticipated.
 
“The fact that this significant increase in pediatric suicides continued into 2005 implies that the alarming spike witnessed from 2003-2004 was more than just a single-year anomaly,” Jeff Bridge, PhD, the lead author of the study that determined the most recent rate, told ScienceDaily. “We now need to consider the possibility that the increase is an indicator of an emerging public health crisis.”
 
In their efforts to diagnose the cause for this dramatic uptick, many experts have pointed their fingers at the types of drugs that young people are, and are not, taking:
 
* Reduced use of antidepressants – In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began requiring manufacturers to include “black box warnings” on antidepressant packaging to inform consumers that the drugs have been associated with increases in suicidal ideation during their first few months of use. Following the appearance of these announcements, use of antidepressants by teens and children began to decline.
 
* Increases in substance abuse – “Sometimes [teen suicide] can fluctuate along with substance abuse,” Dr. Robert Henderson, the chief of child psychiatry for the UC Davis School of Medicine, said in a Nov. 4, 2008 article in the Sacramento Bee. “And that [Journal of American Medical Association] report shows there was an increase in substance abuse.” However, Henderson added that the substance abuse increase could have been caused by the lowered use of antidepressants. “Some might wonder if kids are using substances to self-medicate if they are depressed,” he said.
 
In a Sept. 6, 2007WebMD article following the first statistical spike, Ileana Arias, PhD, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, cautioned against putting too much effort in the attempt to identify a solitary culprit.
 
“It is important to recognize that suicide is a multidimensional and complex problem.” Arias told writer Daniel DeNoon. “As much as we would like to attribute it to a single source, we cannot do that,” she said. “So while antidepressant medication may have role in suicidal ideation, it is not the only factor.”
 
Advice for Parents
 
Dr. James Margolis, a pediatric psychiatrist and medical director of the Sutter Counseling Center, told the Sacramento Bee that one of the most important steps parents can take is to react appropriately to events that may be traumatizing their teens.
 
“Parents tend not to take kids’ problems seriously,” Margolis told reporter Sam McManis for his Nov. 4, 2008 article. “Breaking up with a girlfriend, doing poorly in school – these mean the world to teens. They are what I call developmentally nearsighted and have a myopic view of reality. Parents need to validate those feelings.”
 
Of course, for most children who are plagued with thoughts of suicide, intervention needs to involve much more than a friendly chat. “The vast majority of young people who complete suicide have some sort of psychiatric disorder. Most commonly depression or some mood disorder,” Dr. John Campo of Nationwide Children’s Hospital told ScienceDaily.
 
According to information provided by the Ohio State University Medical Center, the most common risk factors for teen suicide include aggressive and disruptive behavior, substance abuse, and depression.
 
Parents who observe troubling signs in their children should address the situation immediately, and should get whatever professional assistance is necessary. School guidance counselors and family physicians are excellent sources of initial guidance, and the Internet can also be a valuable resource for educating yourself and exploring your options.
 
Depending upon the nature and severity of the problems your child is dealing with, treatment may involve outpatient therapy, a supervised course of antidepressant medications, or enrollment in a therapeutic boarding school or other residential program.
 
Though suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people, it is also the most preventable. Get the help you need today to ensure that your family enjoys many healthy tomorrows.