Previous mental health diagnoses not a factor in most youth suicides in the US, study suggests

Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people in the United States. A new study suggests that the majority of young people who have died by suicide did not have a documented mental health diagnosis in their medical history. Some three out of five young people who died by suicide between January 2010 and December 2021 had no previously diagnosed mental health condition, according to the study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open. This suggests that mental health problems might be either missed or undiagnosed, and thus untreated, in some young people.

The new study included data on people ages 10 to 24 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System, and it included more than 40,000 suicides. Only 40.4 per cent of the young people who died had a documented mental health diagnosis, such as clinical depression, schizophrenia or anxiety disorders, among others.

“We discovered that certain youth who died by suicide were less likely to have a documented mental health diagnosis, including those who used firearms, were of minoritized race or ethnicity, males, and children younger than 14 years of age”, study co-author Dr Jennifer Hoffmanan, emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a news release. “Our findings point to the critical need to increase equitable access to mental health screening, diagnosis, and treatment for all youth,” she added.

The data showed that the odds of having a documented mental health diagnosis varied across racial and ethnic groups and among youth who used firearms. The odds of a diagnosis were lower among young people who were American Indian or Alaska Native and Black compared with White people and lower among Hispanic young people than non-Hispanics.

Hoffmann and her colleagues, from the Emory University School of Medicine and other US institutions, also found that the odds were lower among younger ages – 10 to 14 – compared with ages 20 to 24 and lower among men and boys compared with women and girls. The researchers found that a mental health diagnosis was documented for 33.2 per cent of young people who died by firearms, compared with 61.6 per cent who died by poisonings; 45.8 per cent who died by hanging, strangulation or suffocation; and 44.2 per cent who died by other mechanisms.

“To reduce the risk of youth suicide by firearms, counseling is needed to encourage parents to store firearms in the home safely. These messages should be delivered in community and school settings, in addition to doctors’ offices,” Hoffmann said. “Secure storage laws, also known as child-access prevention laws, have also been demonstrated to reduce firearm suicide rates, and more states need to enact this type of life-saving legislation.”