Suicide Is Now Leading Cause of Death for Children 10-17 in Utah; Attending Church Could Help, Study Says
Suicide was the leading cause of death among 10 to 17-year-old children in Utah again last year and experts believe children who regularly attend religious services or eat meals with their family are at lower risk of committing the act.
"Last year we were over 600 (suicides)," Dr. Todd Grey, chief medical examiner for Utah told Fox 13 about suicides in the state. "We're certainly on track for being over 600 this year. So that means every day, on average, we're going to see at least one to possibly two suicides."
In less than a decade, according to The Associated Press, suicide rates among Utah's youth has tripled. A state report released this month shows Utah's youth suicides was 8.5 per 100,000 people in 2014, the most recent data available. In 2007, the rate was just 3.0 per 100,000.
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"Look at the numbers here folks, these are big numbers," Grey told local news station Fox 13. "One of the saddest things I see on an ongoing basis is the sense of shame and then the effort to hide that a suicide has occurred," he said. "Doesn't help anybody, really."
Utah's most recent Prevention Needs Assessment, which is the state's largest school health and risk behavior survey, collected data from random sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th-grade students in public and charter schools.
An analysis of the 2013 survey based on data from 33,214 respondents in grades eight, 10, and 12 found that 14.1 percent of those students said they had seriously considered suicide in the last year. Tenth graders reported higher levels of suicidal thoughts than eighth and 12th graders.
Female students also reflected higher levels of suicidal thinking than their male counterparts. Students who lived with adults who had not graduated from high school also had a significantly higher rate of suicide ideation compared to those whose parents had completed high school.
Bullying and overuse of electronics were also cited as factors contributing to suicidal thoughts among children.
"Overuse of electronics in general was also associated with higher odds of suicide ideation; those who used video games or computers for non-school-related activities (social media, etc.) for three or more hours per day (24.8 percent of respondents) were about twice as likely to have seriously considered suicide in the past year compared to those who had two or fewer hours of screen time daily," said the study.
A healthy family life and strong ties to a religious community appeared, however, to lower the risk factors for suicide among children the study noted.
"Those who attended religious services or activities once a week or more (60.4 percent of sample) were half as likely to have considered suicide. Even among those who had experienced an episode of depressive symptoms (two or more weeks of feeling sad or hopeless to the point where it interfered with their usual activities) in the previous year (20.8 percent of the sample), religious involvement was still protective," the report said.
"Students who had experienced an episode of depressive symptoms in the past year also benefitted from family mealtimes, as they were still less likely to have considered suicide in the past year," the study continued.
Health officials in Utah have not yet pinned down a specific cause for the trend in suicides in general but Andrea Hood, a suicide prevention coordinator at the Utah Department of Health, told the AP that there are some risk factors found more frequently in Utah and other Rocky Mountain states that might explain why suicide rates are higher in those states than the national average.
Hood noted that residents in Utah move more frequently, which could leave them with fewer social connections and support. Theories that lower oxygen levels at higher altitudes can contribute to higher suicide rates have also been suggested along with a strong culture of self-reliance which might keep some people from seeking help for depression.
