A Growing Number of Young People Are Attempting Suicide by Self-Poisoning

Suicides among young people have been on the rise for a long time. Among 10 to 24 year olds, overall rates of deaths by suicide in the U.S. increased 57% from 2000 to 2018, according to federal data. Now, a new study published in the journal Clinical Toxicology has looked more closely at a particular method of attempted suicide—self-poisoning—and turned up some disturbing results: From 2015 to 2020, suicide attempts by ingesting toxic substances or overdosing on medications soared by 26% among people ages 6 to 19. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The research, led by Dr. Jennifer Ross, a medical toxicologist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, relied on figures from the National Poison Data System, which aggregates information from the country’s 55 state and territorial poison control centers. From 2015-2020, there were 514,350 calls to poison control centers involving children ages 6-19 who, according to the control centers’ guidelines for suspected suicide attempts, had “an exposure resulting from the inappropriate use of a substance for self-harm or self-destructive” reasons. In 2015 there were more than 75,000 such cases reported. That number increased in each of the five consecutive years, topping out at more than 93,500 in 2020. “We began to notice an increase in younger aged children attempting suicide by acute overdoses in our clinical practice at [the University of Virginia Health System],” sa...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Mental Health Source Type: news