Content warning: This story discusses youth death and suicide, including methods.
A CU Anschutz study exploring over 10,000 youth suicides suggests gaps in the system are costing kids’ lives, pointing to a critical need for new approaches in responding to the national crisis.
After parsing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics collected on youth suicides from 2013 to 2022, the researchers found nearly half of youth suicides occurred in groups with no history of clinical contact or with gaps in investigative data.
The takeaway: A new classification system, developed by analyzing a decade of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on youth suicides, is possibly the next step in reducing deaths.
“Many children who die by suicide have no prior mental health histories or contacts,” said the study’s senior author, Joel Stoddard, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine and pediatric psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He and his team hope a newly created classification system that highlights some warning signs in the study can help make a difference.
Below, Stoddard explains the new classification system, how caregivers can respond in kind and the unique challenges in preventing youth versus adult suicide.