A breakdown of youth suicides
A systematic review of 5 years of youth suicide in British Columbia reveals important highlights.
As a member of the Child Death Review Panel through the BC Coroner's Service, I had the opportunity to be a part of a crucial study that aimed to shed light on the tragic issue of youth suicide in British Columbia. Over the course of five years (2013-2018), our team analyzed the data from 111 suicide deaths involving children and teenagers. In this blog post, I will summarize the most significant findings from our research, with the hope that it may contribute to the understanding of this complex issue.
The full report can be downloaded here: (PDF DOWNLOAD)
Our study confirmed that the risk of pediatric suicide increases exponentially with age, with 16 deaths occurring in the 10-14 age group and 95 deaths in the 15-18 age group.
A particularly alarming finding was the overrepresentation of Indigenous children, who made up 23% of the total deaths, despite accounting for 6% of the BC’s youth population. NB: I’ll be doing a deep dive on the importance of “overestimation” (not risk) in a future post.
Mental health played a significant role, as 57% of the decedents had a mental health condition, and 41% had previously been admitted to a hospital or emergency department for mental health concerns. Self-harm was also prevalent, with 44% of the individuals having a history of self-inflicted injuries.
Interestingly, 38% of the decedents had no prior history of suicide attempts or ideation, while 35% had previously attempted suicide, and 26% had prior ideation only.
There was a clear gender disparity, with males accounting for 76% of the deaths (6.3 per 100k), compared to 24% for females (2.3 per 100k). We did not have sexual orientation or trans gender for all decedents, but for those who we did, 9% were identified within the LGBT group (6/59).
Substance use was also common, with 51% of the decedents having a history of using drugs or alcohol. A striking finding was that 60% of the individuals had involvement with the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) in the year of their death, and 12 of them (10%) were children in care.
The leading methods of suicide were hanging, followed by firearms and jumping.
The study identified various stressors that were associated with the suicides:
relationship issues (65%) (can include family relationships and social relationships)
educational challenges (32%)
childhood trauma (27%)
legal troubles (13%)
proximal death (13%)
bullying (12%) - (again i’ll do a deep dive on this later, but you may be surprised to know, given how much political attention is given to bullying in youth suicide, that bullying is a relatively rare stressor identified)
health problems (9%)
Did something you read in there surprise you? Did you learn something? Any questions about what we found? Leave a comment!
Do you have a sense of what it means about how we've organized school, families and social relationships that the most common stressors are educational and interpersonal? Not to downplay suicide in any way, and I might be wrong about this, but it seems like suicide would track, and be an indicator, of a larger social problem that is also manifesting in different ways other than suicide.