Suicide is complicated and influenced by a A whole set of risk factorsIncluding untreated mental illness, prolonged stress, isolation and access to deadly agents such as firearms and medicines. The new report has not deepened the potential reasons for improving teenagers in recent years. But one of the reasons may be that more teenagers open to others for their suicidal thoughts, says Harkavi-Fridman. She indicated a suicide prevention program managed by her organization called Talk saves lifewhich trains people about warning signs of suicide.
“You don’t keep it inside and you just share with someone you are fighting for can be useful,” she says.
In addition, she adds, more teens have sought help and find it.
“More and more children are associated with treatment. And these treatments are specific to suicide and suicide prevention.”
The report also found that the share of teenagers with a major depression episode in the last year has dropped during this time – from 21% to 15%. But only about 60% of teenagers with a recent episode of depression have received treatment.
And 2.6 million teenagers still had thoughts of suicide in 2024, notes Hannah Vesolovski, head of intercession with the National Union for Mental illness.
“It’s 1 in 10 children, which is still too high in this country,” she adds. “So we make progress, but we are not making progress fast enough.”
The report also found that 700,000 adolescents have tried to commit suicide in the last year.
Wesolowski notes that access to mental health remains a challenge for Americans, partly due to the high pocket costs, a shortage of mental health suppliers and a lack of culturally competent care for various racial and ethnic groups.
According to the new report, although there was a slight increase in the number of adults receiving treatment for mental health, almost half of adults with mental illness had problems with access to treatment.
Extinct data
Wessolovski notes something that is missing in the new report compared to previous years.
“This report does not disturb the spread or the percentage of treatment in the race or ethnicity it has in the past,” she says.
“The 2023 report, as in previous years, provides race and ethnicity breakdowns,” a KFF researcher Heather Saunders wrote NPR in an email.
“Removing this data limits our ability to track behavioral health trends and any differences in access to care,” she notedS
Saunders and her colleagues have used this data in the past Understand the differences in the spread of mental illness and serious mental illness in various racial and ethnic groups.
Reports from the previous years, for example, are key to identifying the recent increase in suicide rate among black youth, explains Wessolovski.
“Do we make progress on this?” She says. “Without this distribution data and we really look at demographic data, we may not spend our resources in the right way.”
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Human Services, told NPR in an email that demographic data, including race and ethnicity, will be published in an upcoming report.
Suicide remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States, notes Vesolovski. As the new report notes, suicide took more than 49,000 lives in 2023.
“We put a lot of money into suicide and mental health prevention services. But the need is so big that we know we have to do more,” says Wessolovski, “It’s not enough.”
If you or someone you know fight suicide thoughts, you can dial or send a 988 message and be connected to help.
