Youth Suicide Risk Factors
Although female youths are significantly more likely to think about and attempt suicide than male youths, male youths are more than four times more likely to complete a suicide attempt.
One theory behind this is that males are taught to suppress their feelings, and suicide is their cry for help.
Harvard psychologist William Pollack argued, “Many boys have an exterior structure that looks healthy and happy, but behind it lies more pain than we can imagine. Often, they either feel too ashamed to talk about it or have no one they can really talk to.”
With youths of color expressing more feelings of alienation, cultural and societal conflict, academic anxiety, and feelings of victimization, they are a high-risk group for suicide as well.
In the general population, Caucasian and Native Americans have the highest suicide rates. Native American males have the highest suicide rate among youth of color; though young Native American females have suicide rates more than two times that of females in the general population.
The high suicide rates for this population have been attributed to factors including the stress of acculturation, cultural conflict, loss of ethnic identity, and a lack of cultural and spiritual identity.
In the most recent National Youth Behavior Survey (which did not have enough data on Native Americans to report population statistics for them) data showed that the prevalence of having attempted suicide was:
- higher among Hispanic (10.6%) than Caucasian (6.9%) and African-American (8.4%) students;
- higher among Hispanic female (15.0%) than Caucasian female (10.3%) and African-American female (9.0%) students;
- higher among African-American male (7.7%) and Hispanic male (6.1%) than Caucasian male (3.7%) students.
Sexual minority youth — lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gender (LGBT) — are often considered to be at high risk for suicidal behavior because they are the targets of a great deal of victimization.
41.7% of LGBT youth report not feeling safe in their schools. More than two-thirds report experiencing some form of verbal, physical, or sexual harassment or violence.
LGBT youth also suffer from high rates of depression; a risk factor for youth suicide perhaps due to factors such as the abuse they receive, the confusion they feel about their sexuality, or the difficulty in “coming out” to family and friends.
Nevertheless, despite a widespread perception that LGBT youth are at higher risk for suicide than their peers, scientific data does not uphold this perception.
Nearly two thirds of males and nearly three quarters of females met diagnostic criteria for one or more psychiatric disorders.
Excluding conduct disorder (common among detained youth), nearly 60% of males and more than two thirds of females met diagnostic criteria and had diagnosis-specific impairment for one or more psychiatric disorders.
This is not a complete listing but rather a general overview of at-risk groups.
