Youth Suicide: Cumulative Adult Influence

Youth Suicide: Cumulative Adult Influence

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

Our previous findings suggest the following implication:

The main factors that induce changes in youth suicide rates are those that accumulate during childhood and involve adults.

This is because correlation comparisons indicate that the cumulative past is a better predictor than concurrent events and that past adult rates matter more than past youth rates.

It is true that these correlations involve only suicide rates, but these rates are likely to be indicative of a number of related problems -- not just suicide -- that increase or decrease in similar manner over time.

Intermediate Factors

Even when X causes Y and X correlates highly with Y,  it does not follow that all -- or even most -- of the changes in Y are determined by X.

X could be just one of a family of intermediate factors that change in tandem due to an underlying factor Z:

Z --> X1, X2, X3 --> Y


To picture this, imagine a triangle with sides a, b, c and a circumference C = a+b+c.

Now if a 'zoom' factor z starts stretching and contracting the sides proportionally, the length of side a will over time correlate perfectly with the circumference, and yet side a will never cause more than half of the changes in C (since a < b + c in any triangle).

Exposure to suicide in childhood may very well increase suicide risk in youth but this is unlikely to be the main factor, despite high correlation.  Other factors, such as family mental health problems and dysfunction, including parental abandonment, could play a larger role, all in turn influenced by some underlying factor Z.

We will look into this matter -- a group of intermediate factors affecting youth suicide rates -- in more detail next.



Note:  News Media Coverage

The implication above may seem dubious to those whose information about youth suicide comes mainly from the news media, since stories about such tragedies typically tend to:

a) concentrate on recent events

b) identify problems with peers rather than adults.

News reporting on youth suicide, however, is likely to skew reality.  Just recall the number of stories about the very young, a very small portion of all child youth suicides; suicides by girls also dominate the news, despite boys committing suicide much more often.

Speed in news cycles is essential, and when media look for causes of child suicides, it is easier to quickly identify recent events than those several years in the past; it is also much easier to discover conflict with peers, which often occurs in public with many witnesses, than family dysfunction, which tends to occur in private (plus there are considerations for grieving parents).

Furthermore, whenever journalists do go into more depth or whenever additional sources (such as police reports or court documents) are available, it is often revealed that the child has been suicidal for a long time and that there was a high amount of family dysfunction, conflict or trauma.

Note: Suicide Exposure Impact

One reason to doubt the possibility that youth suicide changes are determined mainly by exposure to suicide trauma in childhood is that historical changes in rates would imply that most youth who kill themselves nowadays were previously exposed to such trauma.  This does not seem plausible.

Another limitation is this:  youth suicide rate (age 15-19) has increased nearly 70% since 2007, but general suicide rate increased by only 25%.  It is unclear why such a change should produce a much larger proportional change.