Child Suicide: non-Hispanic White Teen Children

Child Suicide: non-Hispanic White Teen Children

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

Whenever there is the possibility that racial, ethnic, or age factors strongly affect patterns and trends of interest, we might examine the following group:

non-Hispanic White Teen Children (age 13-17)

nHWTC

This somewhat convoluted construct has the important property of describing a group fairly homogeneous in terms of race, ethnicity, and age, and yet accounting for two thirds of child suicides between 1999-2017.

When need be, we will also split the group into its male and female components: nHWTB (boys) and nHWTG (girls).

The progression of proportionality in relation to 1999-2017 suicides is as follows:

All child suicides 100%, 13-17 suicides 93%, 13-17 White suicides 78%, 13-17  non-Hispanic White suicides 66%.

Boys:

All (male) child suicides 100%, 13-17 suicides 93%, 13-17 White suicides 79%, 13-17  non-Hispanic White suicides 67%.

Girls:

All (female) child suicides 100%, 13-17 suicides 93%, 13-17 White suicides 76%, 13-17  non-Hispanic White suicides 61%.

Note that White and non-Hispanic White girls represent a bit smaller majorities in their category than their respective male counterparts.

The use of the nHWTC group will be demonstrated in the next post analyzing regional and rural patterns of child suicide.

Notes:

The progression of rates is as follows (All, TC, WTC, nhWTC):

• US
• 1.54 4.99 5.46 5.96
• US Male
• 2.22 7.16 7.90 8.75
• US Female 
• 0.83 2.70 2.89 3.02

Although there appear to have been no rapid changes in birth rates, there may be significant differences in age demographics over longer periods of time or between regions, especially once immigration is taken into account.  It is therefore important to also restrict scope to the Teen Children group (age 13-17) that comprises nearly all child suicides (93%).