The United States saw a significant rise in suspected suicide attempts among teen girls during the pandemic, a new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds.
The study, published on Friday by the CDC, found that in May 2020, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts started to increase among adolescents ages 12 to 17, especially girls. Then this year, during February 21 to March 20, the mean weekly number of visits for suspected suicide attempts were 50.6% higher among girls ages 12 to 17 than they were during the same time period in 2019. The study found that among boys ages 12 to 17, emergency visits for suspected suicide attempts increased 3.7%. The increases began after emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts previously appeared to decrease in spring 2020 compared with 2019, according to the study. Higher rates seen among girls Researchers said the new report expands on previous work that showed increases in emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts earlier in the pandemic, and suggests those trends persisted among young people. The study included data on emergency department visits across 49 states and Washington, DC, from the CDC’s National Syndromic Surveillance Program. The researchers took a close look at visits for suspected suicide attempts among people ages 12 to 25 between January 1, 2019 and May 15, 2021. The researchers found that people in that age group made fewer emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts between March and April of last year — following the declaration of the coronavirus pandemic — compared with 2019. But by early May 2020, visits began to increase among adolescents ages 12 to 17, especially among girls, and remained elevated.
