Talk:Teenage suicide in the United States

message: I must say that my sympathies lie squarely with the teenagers who commit suicide, having been close to doing so myself.  If you're a teenager contemplating suicide, TELL SOMEONE NOW.  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL THIS WAY.  As for the verification of the article, here's a first step: [Psychiatric Association: Practice Guideline for the Assessment and Treatment of Patients with Suicidal Behaviors].  I wish that the APA would publish the DSM-IV in an online format for better access to the layperson, but there's enough disparate info online.treebeard  06:31, 14 Nov 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  

message: Black teenagers have a *very* high suicide rate, shouldn't they be put on the list?
Warning Signs: "No sense of humour"
Is that really relevant?
Except for the first two paragraphs ("Psychologists have identified the teenage years as one of the most difficult phases of human life..."), there is little here which wouldn't be relevant to suicide (or contemplation of suicide) regardless of age.
Unless the article underwent major changes, I would consider it redundant, given other suicide-related articles on Wikipedia.  (Of course, if there are in fact aspects of depression or suicide specific to adolescents, those could be added to other articles.)
Do teenagers attempt or sucessfully commit suicide more often than more than any adults?  I'm not sure, but I think it's more common in the 30-50 age range.
What about pre-teen suicide?  Yes, it does happen.  (I will admit to a certain amount of personal bias here.  I began showing signs of clinical depression--including thoughts of suicide--at age eleven.  Thankfully, I survived until the time I sought treatment, which was about 18 years later.)
I wonder whether part of the reason this article exists is that there is at least the impression that minors are not as free as adults to make their own choices, and that therefore intervention might be more successful than if the suicidal person were an adult.
An adult patient in therapy who admits having suicidal thoughts may, depending on a variety of factors--visible distress, past history, the degree to which they speak of specific intent and plans, the attitude of the therapist--in many cases find themselves involuntarily institutionalized in hopes of preventing them from committing suicide.  When this happens, the adult--in a matter of speaking--now has the status of a child, unable to make decisions about their own life.
The discussion regarding higher potential of suicide among teens who are gay or unsure of their sexual orientation:  I do believe this is an important issue.  However, it should be emphasized that suicidal thoughts or actions in these cases are not "caused" by homosexuality, but by bigoted attitudes against homosexuality.
Again, age is not always the issue.  Not every gay person "comes out" as a teenager, and not every gay person who commits suicide is a teen.  (For that matter, lesbians and gay men may commit suicide for reasons not related to their sexual orientation.)  Adolescence is, I'll admit, perhaps a uniquely difficult time for these kids, because the pressure to conform to heterosexual norms is most intense at the ages when teens are starting to go on dates.
I am very concerned about the ethical issues surrounding involuntary institutionalization and shock treatment (excuse me, "electro-convulsive therapy" is the euphemism most often used today).  Anyone sufficiently determined to end their life will eventually find a way.  But that's another article.
drone5 23:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well said, Drone5. This article is in major need of work and clean-up. I'm going to try and expand some of the information here and provide some references. There are some shocking claims here... no sense of humour causes suicide!? homosexuality? Althought I admit I have not researched this, it doesn't sound sensible. SSRIs are a direct cause of suicide? I thought they were anti-depressant and were supposed to help you. This is ridiculous. I could use help from anyone interested. Gflores Talk 06:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Gflores, just give it up. This article is beyond repair. This entire site is beyond repair. The best thing you can do now is blank all of the articles and ban the IPs of everyone who has ever contributed here. Start from scratch and leave out the shit. --preceding unsigned comment by User:Malvolio Everest
Lets do that Malvolio. We will start by banning you. --Arm 18:09, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I doesn't say that "no sense of humor" and "homosexuality" are causes of suicide, Gflores. It says that "no sense of humor" is a warning sign of suicide, and that it's society's views on homosexuality that cause suicides, not homosexuality itself. -Travis 04:18, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No one can say authoritatively whether homosexuality causes suicide or whether society's views and their treatment of GLBT people causes suicide. All the studies can say is that increased suicide occurs among homosexuals. So now what do we do with that information? We can make further hypotheses about the role of society and test them by designing social interventions that have an effect on societal attitudes and behaviors and see if that reduces the actual occurrences of suicides among GLBTs. But I don't know how we're going to change people's attitudes on this issue. The other alternative is to somehow find an effective "cure" for homosexuality and see if that reduces suicides. (I suspect such "cures" might have tho opposite effect though.) Dcs002 (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  High Risk Groups for suicide 

message: Not to long ago I found myself in a crisis of self.   After looking on the internet for advise, I became more depressed.  Most of the advise I found was written by evangelical christians.  In my opinion it was bad advise.  Rather than pointing me towards helpful information, rather than sharing experiences, rather than giving constructive advise, the articles told me I was evil and that I could change.  I am gay, not evil.  Because search engines rank query result sites by numbers of links, a systematic approach to web content preparation and publishing can result in standardizing of opinion and advise.  I believe that moralizing an issue that has not been proven to be a moral issue is just wrong.  In fact, there is substantial evidence that sexual orientation is not a choice.  I wonder how many teenagers commit suicide after reading bad internet advise?  This generation has been taught to go to google, for example, to get answers.  Internet search engines have a responsibility to make sure that teenagers get the best life advise possible.  A child who does not have access to a therapist but who does have access to the internet is at great risk.  I would never send my child to an evangelical christian for advise; yet on his or her own, a child is likely to query the internet and get bad advise.  I consider the uncritical offering of therapy by query a kind of child abuse.  What would be worse, to have your child molested by a pervert, or lose your child to suicide due to bad advise?  Obviously suicide.  
It seems to me that some warning should go into this article.  Some kind of disclaimer should be made to warn children of the dangers of bad, simplistic, moralistic "advise."  When a child seeks help, a cold, impersonal, uncritical sermon could be the tipping point.  Moreover, search engines should offer the same kind of disclaimer on their portals.  Google is not a substitute for parental or professional advise.  I am an adult.  I am more prepared to parse out good and bad advise.  A child is not.
Is anyone aware of any meaningful, scientific studies that look at internet browser history and teen suicides?
:Not internet browser history, but one study (JAMA. 2004 Aug 4;292(5):594-601.) reports a slightly increased risk of teen suicide associated with Southern Baptist (4% increase) and Mormon (12% increase) religious affiliations, and a very slightly (though significantly) reduced rate among Catholics (2% decrease, teens and young adults). This was not the primary intent of this study, and they only reported on four religious affiliations, all Christian (the other was "other Protestant," no effect), so it's not complete, but I think there's probably something there. I also think it's interesting that the authors chose not to discuss this finding at all in their paper. That's really unusual in research -- to report statistical significance and not discuss it. Dcs002 (talk) 09:16, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just found another study (Am J Epidemiol. 2002 Mar 1;155(5):413-9.) that attributes a much higher rate of suicide among Mormon youth to those with a low level of commitment to the faith. They were more than three times as likely to commit suicide than highly committed Mormon youth. If the previous study was correct, then highly committed Mormon youths have a MUCH LOWER risk of suicide than the national average. Interesting... Dcs002 (talk) 09:29, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Evangelical Advise

message: Aproximatly how many gay suisides are there a year?--66.41.169.244 14:32, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The LGBTQ+ youth section consists of thinly veiled opinionating. It suggests that there is an increase in suicide due to the passage of discriminatory laws. What is needed is some evidence that LGBTQ+ youth suicide is greater now than in the past, when any fair-minded observer would agree that discrimination was much greater. Nicmart (talk) 05:38, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gay suicides  

message: I have created footnotes, rather than have links pasted everywhere. Skinnyweed 02:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: Added a huge bunch of text, some useful but all of it very poorly written. Someone go through it. Skinnyweed 22:51, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Teenage_suicide&oldid=51183281 10:08, 2 May 2006] edit 

message: Nothing I read in this article convinced me that suicide among teenagers is so significantly different from suicide among every other age group that it needs its own article. Clinical depression, homophobia and low self-esteem aren't exclusive to people aged 13-19, and the statistics cited early in the article (assuming they are accurate) indicate that teenagers are not the age group with the highest rate of suicide or attempted suicide. This is all aside from the fact that, like nearly every article on the suicide template is inundated with suicide prevention soapbox. - LeaHazel 16:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistical significance?  

message: This is so vague and US-centric. I understand that in the USA the term refers to Native Americans which i accept are vulnerable to suicide. But maybe it should be changed to 'minority Indigenous youths'. Where i'm from, the UK, about 90% of the population is indigenous. In fact other than in the americas and australia indigenous peoples are in the majority and Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, not an american encyclopedia. So i'm going to edit it.
Ciimbranno 22:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Indigenous youths' vulnerable to suicide. 

message: I have added more wiki links and done some general editing for clarity without changing overall content.  Most changes are pretty minor.  Aleta 09:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Some general editing

message: Looking back through the history, there have been a number of tims this page has been vandalized recently, be people only with IP addresses.  Should it perhaps by temporarily limited to those signed into user accounts to stop this?
Aleta 02:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs semi-protection to stop vandals?

message: Hi, I just wanted to know why people ages 20-24 are still part of the teenage suicide article. (unsigned)
Or aged 10, 11 and 12 for that matter. The article is poorly named for the data given, but likely shows up well in searches for people that this data might be relevant to. Data on teenage suicide can be INFERRED from the statistics given here to a limited degree. For to age range 10-24 years, less than half of that range is "teenage."Neededandwanted (talk) 06:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ages 20-24? 

message: I'm wondering where to put this piece of information on Wikipedia.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029685/Schoolboy-hanged-father-confiscated-new-Wii.html
A teen boy hung himself with his tie because his father took away his wii.
What is odd is normally if you try to hang yourself with a tie, either the tie breaks or it rips.  It should not kill you, ever.  Hanging also does not kill you unless it breaks your neck. William Ortiz (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a suicide. I don't think this is a place to discuss the tensile strength of neckties or whether a true hanging requires a neck-breaking drop. It's still another devastating teen suicide. Dcs002 (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm wondering where to put this piece of information 

message: The article states that "indigenous" minority groups are at a higher risk for suicide.  Should the "indigenous" be removed?
Mrscientistman (talk) 22:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Indigenous is not an offensive term. In the US it's used by tribal entities broadly to include peoples from nations outside the US. For example, in 2004 the Menominee Nation hosted an international conference on sustainability titled Indigenous Wisdom. Dcs002 (talk) 07:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of "indigenous" minority groups 

message: "The findings also reported that antidepressant drugs reduced suicide risk than increase it."
you have the past tense (reduced) conflicting with present tense (increase), meaning both should be present or both should be past. 
also, "than" could have been a misspelled "then", meaning the sentence should have read "antidepressant drugs reduce(d) suicide risk more, then increase(d) it"
or the than was correct, in which case the sentence would read "antidepressant drugs reduce(d) suicide risk more than they increase(d) it" or "antidepressant drugs reduce(d) suicide risk less than they increase(d) it" 
im not going to follow the cite and find out what the findings also reported, im just pointing this out to the people more involved with the upkeep of this article. not trying to be a grammar nazi, just friendly proof reading. 
67.246.13.226 (talk) 08:29, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  typo, however im not sure quite how to fix it 

message: This section is marked for neutrality issues. I've done some work on it -- added citations & subheadings, reworded things a bit, and moved the section on parental interest to the Causes section. Is it good enough to remove the neutrality cleanup mark? Dcs002 (talk) 09:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Suicide prevention

message: This article seems to be about suicide of age 15-24, and therefore needs a better name. DJ Clayworth (talk) 23:20, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs a better name 

message: When the search term "youth suicide" is entered we are directed to "Teenage suicide in the United States" we need to either stop this happening and begin a new page for youth suicide or include the existing page in a broader commentary. I can provide relevant content as many others could also no doubt, however my editing skills fall short of either creating a new page that the wiki thinks already exists or changing the title of this existing article. This is a topic of immense importance and requires a far broader response. Perhaps someone else could create the new broader page or change the title of this one so others can add more relevant subject matter?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.77.163.110 (talk) 02:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You have your "Youth suicide" article; please do not continue to insert off-topic material to this US-specific article. Australia is not part of the US. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:11, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Call for new article

message: I took out the reference to the extremely simplistic and biased 2007 study.  The study was a response to the 2004 warnings about the use of SSRIs on youth, and claimed that a decrease in the SSRI prescription rate resulted in a large increase in the youth suicide rate.
I would object to this study based on methodological, philosophical, and even more objective bases.  Philosophically, this study was problematic, of course, because of the dedication to the biological model, and the conviction that emotional problems among young people were not  connected to their circumstances.  Objectively, after three and a half years, look at the predictions of the study.  Supposedly, as young people stopped taking these drugs, the youth suicide rate was supposed to rise.  That's not what happened.  The study's authors were wrong.  Not to confuse causation with correlation, but the youth suicide rate actually decreased when it was supposed to increase in those two or three years, even as the larger suicide rate did increase.  The study's methodology and language was obviously quite bad.
I was concerned that this article would mislead people into thinking that drugs were an easy answer, and that it would offer simplistic explanations for the emotional problems of young people that would absolve parents and other grownups, and place the onus for young peoples' distress on belittling labels that drag these people down for life.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakpa2001 (talk • contribs) 23:09, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a little confused — are you and 98.149.111.47 the same person?  If so, the reason I undid your content removal was that you didn't use an edit summary (as explained here, removing content without giving a reason is generally a bad idea).  Feel free, of course, to remove it again on the above basis.  —Tommyjb (talk) 20:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  September 2007 study 

message: At the moment it reads 'In the U.S, male adolescents commit suicide at a rate five times greater than that of female adolescents, although suicide attempts by females are three times as frequent as those by males' but https://books.google.co.za/books?id=uqqp-sDCjo4C&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=Gallup+also+finds+that+slightly+more+teenage+girls+than+boys+said+that+they+have+either+come+close+to,+or+actually+attempted,+suicide.&source=bl&ots=CRCBY5fltw&sig=XAM0YkgCidhjqpwMh-0DIxwizMc&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Gallup%20also%20finds%20that%20slightly%20more%20teenage%20girls%20than%20boys%20said%20that%20they%20have%20either%20come%20close%20to%2C%20or%20actually%20attempted%2C%20suicide.&f=false says that 9% of girls compared to 4% of boys have tried to commit suicide. Of course, that was over a decade ago. Is there a reference to say it's changed? ~~  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.226.203.142 (talk) 16:28, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Those statistics aren't inherently at odds, as they're measuring different things. The first quoted statistic is about successful suicides, the second is about the number of suicide attempts, and the one you're introducing is the number of people who attempt. It may be (to used a simplified example) that the average female who attempts suicide attempts it more than once, the average male just once... which would go along with the first statistic, because if males are more likely to succeed in their attempts, they are less likely to be around to have the chance to try again. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sex Ratio 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The opening sentence reads "Teenage suicide in the United States remains comparatively high in the 15 to 24 age group." But the word "teenage" means somewhere between 13 and 19 years old (inclusive). The 15-24 age range inappropriately leaves out the youngest teenagers and inappropriately includes a bunch of non-teenagers. We should present data specifically about people who are literally 13-19 years old, especially in the opening sentence.Sonicsuns (talk) 23:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I did some digging and got better data, but now I'm not sure how to cite it. There's a CDC page at  that lets you generate custom reports. If you create a custom age range of 13-19, you'll see that the 2016 suicide rate per 100,000 was 8.31. But I can't link directly to the results; I can only point to the first page and hope that the reader will be willing to fill out the form. How can I cite this? Sonicsuns (talk) 00:13, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The definition of "teenager" 

message: I would like to add a section focusing on school policy and the impact that it has had. The sources I will use are all from the Jstor database. 
WARD, JANICE E., and MELISSA A. ODEGARD. “A Proposal for Increasing Student Safety through Suicide Prevention in Schools.” The Clearing House, vol. 84, no. 4, 2011, pp. 144–149. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41304324. Accessed 1 June 2020.
Bratsis, Michael E. “Health Wise: Preventing Teen Suicide.” The Science Teacher, vol. 81, no. 6, 2014, pp. 14–14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43683478. Accessed 1 June 2020.
Weiss, R. “Teen Suicide Clusters: More than Mimicry.” Science News, vol. 136, no. 22, 1989, pp. 342–342. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3974140. Accessed 1 June 2020.
Garfinkel, Barry, and Jack Frymier. “Understanding and Preventing Teen Suicide: An Interview with Barry Garfinkel.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 70, no. 4, 1988, pp. 290–293. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20403878. Accessed 1 June 2020.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Forresthearst (talk • contribs) 06:38, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Understanding and preventing Teen Suicide 

message: Wikipedia does not have a style guide that I can find covering suicide. One editor boldly made a change to avoid the term "committed suicide", another reverted it apparently on the basis of lack of consensus, which seems insufficient. Per this RFC, "A minority of editors think "commit suicide" is archaic, and if some other equal or better formulation exists and a change is made, we should not tendentiously revert it." This reversion seems to have been tendentious. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:35, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "committing" 

message: "Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people in the United States from the ages of 10 to 56."
The footnote links to an article that doesn't contain that stat.
Here is what I found from the CDC:
"In 2020, suicide was among the top 9 leading causes of death for people ages 10-64. Suicide was the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and 25-34."
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html 71.105.54.193 (talk) 21:10, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  This statistic seems incorrect 

message: Stats, maps. "Teen suicide" tab at top: 
*https://www.americashealthrankings.org 
Fast way to put stats on US map state by state: 
*Commons:File talk:Template map of US states and District of Columbia.svg/Instructions 
--Timeshifter (talk) 04:36, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs some tables, maps, and graphs