Discuss current trends and means of suicide in adolescents and emerging adults.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Suicidal behavior is rare in childhood but escalates in adolescence and then increases further in emerging adulthood. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in 10- to 19-year-olds today in the United States. In the last two decades, there has been a considerable decline in the percentage of adolescents who think seriously about committing suicide, although from 2009 to 2015 this percentage increased from 14 to 18 percent. Far more adolescents contemplate or attempt suicide than successfully commit suicide. Females were more likely to attempt suicide than males, but males were more likely to succeed in committing suicide. In emerging adulthood, males are six times more likely than females to commit suicide. Males use more lethal means, such as guns, in their suicide attempts, whereas adolescent females are more likely to cut their wrists or take an overdose of sleeping pills, methods less likely to result in death. Adolescent suicide attempts vary across ethnic groups in the United States. More than 20 percent of Native American/Alaska Native female adolescents reported that they had attempted suicide in the previous year and suicide accounts for almost 20 percent of NA/AN deaths among 15- to 19-year-olds. African American and non-Latino White males reported the lowest incidents of suicide attempts.