A stable overall rate of suicide among children ages 5-11 over the last two decades obscures a troubling demographic shift: While rates of suicide dropped for white children during that time period, they climbed significantly for black children, a new study has found.
Rates for white children dropped from 1.14 per million in the period between 1993 and 1997 to 0.77 per million for the period between 2008 and 2012. For African-American children, suicide rates increased from 1.36 per million in the period between 1993 and 1997 to 2.56 per million from 2008 to 2012, according to the study conducted by Nationwide Children’s Hospital, in Columbus, Ohio, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month. Suicide is among the leading causes of death for school-age children younger than 12, and rates are much higher for boys than for girls, the study says.
