The prevalence of preteen suicide has more than doubled in 11 years, an alarming trend that researchers say needs urgent study in order to prevent such tragedies.
In 2008, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death among preadolescents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2019, the most recent year for which statistics were available, it was the fifth, causing the National Institute of Mental Health to identify it as a priority for research and intervention.
“To me, that just seemed concerningly high, especially considering their age,” said Richard Liu, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of a new article on the subject in JAMA Psychiatry.
Although a substantial number of studies have focused on self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) in adolescents and adults, the amount of research on SITBs in children 12 or younger is slim, Liu and his co-authors found.
In the case of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, this is due in part to the long-held belief that preadolescent children don’t have the cognitive capability to understand the nature of death — and so they’re incapable of thoughts or acts of suicide.
“If a child says they’re going to kill themselves, quite often people say, ‘Oh, they don’t really mean what they’re saying,’” said Liu, director of suicide research in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s just hard to fathom children that young having these kinds of thoughts and experiences.”
The authors analyzed 58 studies and found that the lifetime prevalence of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and non-suicidal self-injury among preteens were 15.1%, 2.6% and 6.2%, respectively, in community samples. These data suggest that about 17% of preadolescents with suicidal thoughts go on to attempt to kill themselves. And just under one in 1 million actually succeed.
One was Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover. In April 2009, the 11-year-old hanged himself in his Springfield home after repeatedly being bullied at school. His mother, Sirdeaner Walker, went on to become an activist against bullying until her death in 2016.
In the studies Liu and his colleagues analyzed, child maltreatment, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and depression all were associated with risk, whereas parental support was a “particularly key protective factor during childhood.”
Given that relatively little attention has been devoted to studying SITBs in preteens, the authors say, it’s “perhaps not surprising” that studies on treatments for this age group are “all but nonexistent.”
