Our news today is sobering and it raises a great concern for us. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24, surpassed only by car crashes and homicide. Earlier this year, CDC′s national center for health statistics provided data indicating that youth suicide spiked between 2003 and 2004.
Today, CDC is releasing data on suicides occurring in the U.S. from 1990 through 2004. We found that combined suicide rates for persons 10 to 24 years declined 28.5 percent from 1990 to 2003. But from 2003 to 2004 the rate increased by eight percent, signaling the largest single rise in 15 years. The significant increase in rates of suicide from 2003 to 2004 was limited to 10 to 14-year-old girls, 15 to 19-year-old girls and young women and 15 to 19-year-old boys and young men. Prior to 2003, the rates for all of these three groups had generally been trending downward. However, from 2003 to 2004, there was a 75.9 percent increase in the suicide rate among 10 to 14-year-old girls, a 32.3 percent increase among 15 to 19-year-old girls and young women and a nine percent increase among 15 to 19-year-old boys and young men. In surveillance speak, this is a dramatic and huge increase.
We also find that changes had taken place in the methods used in suicide. In 2004, hanging and suffocation became the most common method among girls, accounting for 71.4 percent of suicides among 10 to 14-year-old girls, and 49 percent among 14 to 19-year-old girls. From 2003 to 2004, hanging and suffocation suicides among 10 to 14-year-old girls more than doubled and increased by almost 44 percent for girls 15 to 19.
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