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Suicide Rates
Rise in a Generation
of Black Youth
Multiple causes underlie a disturb-
ing trend. The increase for girls
is more than double that for boys
Suicide is a devastating problem
among Black youth, and researchers
and mental health professionals are
desperate to understand why and
how best to address it. A 2018 study
found, for instance, that Black
children between the ages of five
and 12 are about twice as likely to
die by suicide as white children of
the same age. The urgency to deal
with the issue has only grown more
acute. A new study found that
suicide rates among Black children
and adolescents have recently been
worsening: between 2003 and 2017,
suicides rose in this group, especially
among Black girls, whose rate of
increase was more than twice as
high as that of Black boys.
In the new paper, published on
September 8 in the Journal of the
American Academy of Child &
Adolescent Psychiatry, researchers
extracted information from Centers
of Disease Control and Prevention
databases about the 1,810 Black
people aged five to 17 who had died
by suicide between 2003 and 2017.
They found that suicides rose over
time during that period among Black
youth of all ages and that the biggest
increases occurred among teens
aged 15 to 17. More than 2.5 times
as many Black boys died by suicide
as Black girls, but the annual increase
among girls—6.6 percent—was more
than twice what it was for boys.
The findings are “deeply concern-
ing,” says Janelle Goodwill, a psychol-
ogist and social worker at the Univer-
sity of Chicago Crown Family School
of Social Work, Policy, and Practice,
who was not involved in the research.
They also challenge the long-held
assumption that suicide rates among
young white individuals are higher
than those among young Black
people. The September 8 paper only
analyzed data through 2017, so it
lacks figures for the COVID-
pandemic. A cdc study published in
August 2020 reported that, in late
June of that year, more than one
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