Child Suicide in Context of Adult Suicide

Child Suicide in Context of Adult Suicide

Note: this is part of the Youth Suicide Rise project.

Child suicide rates are obviously far below adult rates (1.54 vs 6.34).

The boys to girls suicide ratio (2.22/0.83 = 2.7) is lower than the adult male to female ratio (25.15/6.34 = 4.0).

Let us now look at the following (more relevant) subgroups:

Teen Children (TC 13-17), Teen Adults (TA 18-19), Young Adults (YA 20-29), Middle-aged Adults (MA 30-49):

We can see that male and female suicide rates increase with advanced age in a different manner: for boys from rapid to slow, while for girls the gains are fairly linear.

Let us examine the transition from childhood to adulthood in more detail:

Now we see that female transition is more nuanced ('wavy') than male transition, and that age 21 rates are far above age 15 rates for boys (331%) but much less so for girls (145%).

Notes:

The middle-age adults (MA) group includes the bulk of parents with minors (the current mean age of mothers at birth is 29 years, first-time mothers is 27 years).  This age group will play a more important role later, as we will look at potential parental factors influencing child suicide.