According to the CDC, in 2022 suicide was the third leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults 15–24 years of age (3). Bommersbach and colleagues (4) focus on suicidality in high school students with the aim of characterizing trends in suicidal thoughts and attempts and assessing whether changes over time are associated with health-risk behaviors that are also associated with suicidality.
Data on past year suicidal ideation and attempts that were used in the analyses were derived from the biennial national Youth Risk Behavior Survey collected from 2007 to 2021. Five categories of health-risk behaviors were also collected: violence, substance use, sexual activity, weight issues, and physical activity levels. The study sample included data from 119,654 individuals, average age of 16, and approximately 45% identified as non-Hispanic White. In 2007, 14.4% of students endorsed past-year suicidal ideation in the previous year compared to 22.1% in 2021.
For suicide planning the incidence in 2007 was 11.2%, which increased to 17.6% in 2021. Over the same time period reports of suicide attempts increased from 6.9% to 10.1%. Over the time of study, the biennial average percent change was used as the metric to assess trends in suicidality, which significantly increased by about 3% for both suicidal ideation and planning and by 2.2% for suicide attempts.
The rate of increase for suicidal thoughts was greater for girls and for non-Hispanic White and Black youth. Most of the health-risk behaviors that were assessed were associated with suicidality and as expected, higher amounts of risk behaviors were associated with higher levels of suicidality. However, in general, the rate of increase over time in suicidal ideation and risk behaviors did not significantly differ between individuals that reported one or less versus four-to-five categories of risk behaviors.
History of carrying a weapon was the behavior that had the greatest association with suicidality, with an odds ratio of 3.21 for suicidal thoughts and 2.48 for suicide attempts.
Dr. Jeff Bridge from Ohio State University and Dr. David Brent from the University of Pittsburgh contribute an editorial (5) that puts the findings from this paper in perspective in relation to other works and highlights actions that can be taken to identify at risk youths and to intervene to hopefully reduce their risk of suicide.
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