Teen suicide

[crazy canuck]

Ok serious question - are boys more likely to commit suicide? It seems to me that girls are more resilient at that age but I could be wrong.

Many times more.

Males are, but boys?

[DGuller]

Ok serious question - are boys more likely to commit suicide? It seems to me that girls are more resilient at that age but I could be wrong.

Many times more.

Males are, but boys?

The sex ratio is consistent over ages, at about 4:1.

[crazy canuck]

So here is the data in the US on teens.  Girls try more often but boys succeed much more often.  The reason - the boys use guns while the girls use pills.  I wonder what the stats are in non gun nut countries?

Of the total number of suicides among teens ages 15 to 24 in 2001, 86% were male and 14% were female (1). The great difference between male teen suicide and female teen suicide rates is because males use firearms more to commit suicide than females (who use pills more) and succeed at suicide more than females.

According to American Psychiatric Association (2), four times as many teen males succeed at killing themselves than women; however, three times as many teen females attempt suicide. In 2001, firearms were used in 54% of youth suicides.

https://www.teenhelp.com/teen-suicide/teen-suicide-statistics/

[Malthus]

So here is the data in the US on teens.  Girls try more often but boys succeed much more often.  The reason - the boys use guns while the girls use pills.  I wonder what the stats are in non gun nut countries?

Of the total number of suicides among teens ages 15 to 24 in 2001, 86% were male and 14% were female (1). The great difference between male teen suicide and female teen suicide rates is because males use firearms more to commit suicide than females (who use pills more) and succeed at suicide more than females.

According to American Psychiatric Association (2), four times as many teen males succeed at killing themselves than women; however, three times as many teen females attempt suicide. In 2001, firearms were used in 54% of youth suicides.

https://www.teenhelp.com/teen-suicide/teen-suicide-statistics/

It's pretty well the same though as the Canadian stats I posted for men & women generally. Women try more, but men succeed more (for whatever reason).

[crazy canuck]

Looked up the data for Canada and there is an interesting cultural difference.  The rates for male teens is dropping while the rate for females is rising.  The reason appears to be the girls are using more lethal methods than their American counterparts - suffocation rather than pills.  And the boys are not apparently using guns as much as their American counterparts.

So these findings suggest that Berkut really should get rid of that gun.

"However, when we analyze males and females a little bit further and by age group, we discovered that among male children and adolescents, the suicide rates are generally decreasing, while the suicide rates among the female children and adolescents are increasing," she said from Ottawa.

Suicide rates for girls aged 10 to 14 rose to 0.9 per 100,000 in 2008 from 0.6 per 100,000 in 1980. Rates for female teens aged 15 to 19 went up to 6.2 per 100,000 increased from 3.7 per 100,000 during the same period.

"One way of understanding this is that there's a little bit of convergence among males and females," Dr. Laurence Kirmayer, a psychiatrist at McGill University, said from Montreal.

In the past, females tended to make more suicide attempts than males, but males used more lethal means, so were more likely to die, he said.

"And the difference has had to do in part with kinds of attempts, but also with the methods that people use," Kirmayer said. Self-inflicted gunshots and deliberate drug overdoses, for instance, are less often used.

Skinner said suffocation is now the most common means of committing suicide, especially among young females. Deaths by hanging or other suffocation methods have risen by eight per cent per year on average for girls, while the use of firearms and poison decreased significantly

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/04/02/canadian-suicide-rates-among-young-females-increased-study_n_1396980.html

[crazy canuck]

It's pretty well the same though as the Canadian stats I posted for men & women generally. Women try more, but men succeed more (for whatever reason).

Nope, look at the report I found on Canadian teens.

[Malthus]

It's pretty well the same though as the Canadian stats I posted for men & women generally. Women try more, but men succeed more (for whatever reason).

Nope, look at the report I found on Canadian teens.

The report you found states as well that more boys kill themselves. The *rate* for girls has gone up (while for boys it has gone down), but the numbers are still uneven.

In 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 233 Canadians aged 10 to 19 — 156 males and 77 females — died by their own hands.

Boys were still twice as likely to succeed in committing suicide as girls, in the latest year. There is some convergence, but the rates are still remarkably different by sex. No stats on attempts in the article. 

[crazy canuck]

Boys were still twice as likely to succeed in committing suicide as girls, in the latest year. There is some convergence, but the rates are still remarkably different by sex. No stats on attempts in the article.

Yes, which is different than the 4x more likely to succeed in the US.  It is striking that the difference between our two countries comes down to gun use.  So your comment that the US rates were about the same as the Canadian misses an important point about the way in which US male teens commit suicide and the reason why they are so disproportionately successful in their attempts.

[DGuller]

It's definitely true that gun prevalence is a very important factor in suicide rates, if not by far the most important.  If you line up US states by suicide rates, and then line them up by firearm ownership rates, you're going to have very similar orderings.  Of course, in this case, the "correlation is not causation" caveat does apply.  So many by-state statistics in US are all very strongly correlated with each other, so you can't suss out causation just from simple statistical analysis.

[crazy canuck]

It's definitely true that gun prevalence is a very important factor in suicide rates, if not by far the most important.  If you line up US states by suicide rates, and then line them up by firearm ownership rates, you're going to have very similar orderings.  Of course, in this case, the "correlation is not causation" caveat does apply.  So many by-state statistics in US are all very strongly correlated with each other, so you can't suss out causation just from simple statistical analysis.

Sure, owning a gun doesnt cause the teen to commit suicide.  But having a gun available to be used by a teen who tries to commit suicide results in a higher rate of successful suicide attempts.

[The Brain]

Surely if the gun is available to a kid it hasn't been stored properly?

[DGuller]

It's definitely true that gun prevalence is a very important factor in suicide rates, if not by far the most important.  If you line up US states by suicide rates, and then line them up by firearm ownership rates, you're going to have very similar orderings.  Of course, in this case, the "correlation is not causation" caveat does apply.  So many by-state statistics in US are all very strongly correlated with each other, so you can't suss out causation just from simple statistical analysis.

Sure, owning a gun doesnt cause the teen to commit suicide.  But having a gun available to be used by a teen who tries to commit suicide results in a higher rate of successful suicide attempts.

That's not the causation I mean here.  By "cause" I mean "cause higher suicide death rates", not "cause higher suicide attempt rates".  So the second sentence would still be a causative relationship. 

It sure makes a lot of sense that there would be a causative relationship between having access to a gun and having a higher risk of death by suicide, but one has to be careful about confirmation bias with such things.

[MadImmortalMan]

Sure, owning a gun doesnt cause the teen to commit suicide.  But having a gun available to be used by a teen who tries to commit suicide results in a higher rate of successful suicide attempts.

That should even out the ratio then. It doesn't seem to be doing so. People who are likely only attempting suicide as a cry for help but don't really want to die aren't going to be likely to use a gun in their attempt.

[Malthus]

Boys were still twice as likely to succeed in committing suicide as girls, in the latest year. There is some convergence, but the rates are still remarkably different by sex. No stats on attempts in the article.

Yes, which is different than the 4x more likely to succeed in the US.  It is striking that the difference between our two countries comes down to gun use.  So your comment that the US rates were about the same as the Canadian misses and important point about the way in which US males teens commit suicide and the reason why they are so disproportionately successful in their attempts.

Problem is that we may not be comparing apples to apples. Your article is about the rate in the last year available in Canada, 2008, with the point being that there has been considerable recent change that has caused the numbers to converge compared with stats in 1980. [The stats previously mentioned from Canada were not based on the latest year available; nor were those from the US].

The point in the article is that this is a recent development. From your article:

"However, when we analyze males and females a little bit further and by age group, we discovered that among male children and adolescents, the suicide rates are generally decreasing, while the suicide rates among the female children and adolescents are increasing," she said from Ottawa.

Suicide rates for girls aged 10 to 14 rose to 0.9 per 100,000 in 2008 from 0.6 per 100,000 in 1980. Rates for female teens aged 15 to 19 went up to 6.2 per 100,000 increased from 3.7 per 100,000 during the same period.

The rate for girls has increased considerably, while that for boys has "decreased"; it is entirely possible that the difference in 1980 was "4X" (though they don't give all the figures), because it is still "2X" after this convergence.

If the rate in Canada *used* to be considerably more uneven (maybe even 4X), and since has decreased to 2X, what does that do to your "the difference is guns"? Canada didn't have a US style gun culture in 1980.  It hasn't given up guns in the 1980-2008 period. The difference in gun culture between the two countries can't really explain this difference, because the rates have changed while the "gun culture" in Canada hasn't.

[crazy canuck]

Sure, owning a gun doesnt cause the teen to commit suicide.  But having a gun available to be used by a teen who tries to commit suicide results in a higher rate of successful suicide attempts.

That should even out the ratio then. It doesn't seem to be doing so. People who are likely only attempting suicide as a cry for help but don't really want to die aren't going to be likely to use a gun in their attempt.

The problem with your explanation is that the rate of successful suicide rate amongst males in Canada is lower than in the US because Canadian males don't use guns as much as their American counterparts.  An explanation seems to be that among those who really do intend to commit suicide the success rate is much higher in a country that has ready access to guns.