Glen Whitman reports:
I went back to the original data source (imagine that!) and found that the stereotype is dead wrong: suicide rates are notably lower for teenagers than adults…Suicide rates do rise throughout the teen years, but they plateau at about age 20 and remain flat throughout the years 20 to 65. Then they jump again for the 65+ demographic.
In case you’re wondering, teen suicide rates have not been rising, either. They’ve been in decline since the late 1980s.
Yet these teens still take the most risks.
Any discussion about teen suicide needs to take sexual orientation into account. The academic literature is teeming with studies showing that gay teens, especially males, are far more likely to ideate about suicide, perhaps by a factor of ten, and also more likely to attempt suicide.
One would like to think that the decline in teen suicide rates that you mention is at least partially due to the gay rights movement and our society’s increasing intolerance toward the intolerant.
Tyler — there is a HUGE difference between taking risks (entrepreneur! downhill skier!) and committing suicide (life is hopeless!). I should hope that the gradient would steepen with age, as the troubles of life settled in, but we need the risk taking exuberance of youth to propel innovation and excitement (let alone new babies
. Risk good / Suicide bad.
It’s my understanding that these statistics underreport suicide rates. A teen who shoots himself in the head dies from suicide. A teen who deliberately drives his car into a retaining wall dies from an auto accident.
Ted – I thought the same thing, but if anything, I would expect undercounting of suicides to be higher for adults than teens. Adults who commit suicide usually/often invalidate their life insurance policies, and therefore there’s an incentive to conceal the nature of the suicide, moreso than for teens where that particular motivation is absent. Teen suicide may be more likely to commit public suicides, if it is motivated by mistreatment by their caregiver (eg, parent) or a scorned lover. When it is either, isn’t the motivation to punish the person, which requires that the suicide be easy to interpret?
Tyler – Theoretically, suicide probabilities rise when the expected value of future consumption falls below zero. If anything, the fact that teens take risks seems to be that they are highly optimistic, not pessimistic, about their futures.
Kip – interesting hypothesis. You could use the Census 5% for 1990 and 2000, and following Dan Black’s papers on the locations of gay couples, try to build a measure of gay cities. Then you could see if it is falling in those cities. If there was a correlation with even the states, that would be interesting. One thing is interesting is that if you look at the time series through the link, the fall in suicides starts in the early 1990s, which is when the Donahue-Levitt abortion-crime hypothesis predicts declines in crime. I wonder if you did a triple difference using the youth in the early repeal states and compared them with individuals born just before repeal in those five states, then compared them with the Roe states, whether there is any noticeable decrease in suicide probabilities for the abortion treated states. I suspect that there is not, but the time series is at least consistent with that broad trend.
The misconception is so much simpler than all this. It’s just a matter of intuitive and incorrect risk assessment.
I worry that my parent may soon die of a heart attack or cancer because in their age group that is the leading cause of death. I worry that my teenage sister will die of a car accident or of suicide, because they are the leading cause of death in her age group. However, for some irrationnal reason, I worry about my parent’ life and my sister’s life about equally.
There’s a simple explanation for the perception of high suicide rates for teens… we don’t expect them to die, and it’s one of the most common causes. So it sticks in our minds.
For white males 15-19, accident rates are 47 per 100,000; suicide is 15; homicide is 10. For black teens males, it is accident 38; suicide 11; homicide 70.
That last little stat is particularly unfortunate.
Yes, here it is but it requires payment:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3808%28197401%2F02%2982%3A1%3C83%3AAETOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E
Like murder, suicide can be thought of as having different “degrees”.
If reckless behaviour leading to another’s death is “third degree murder” or “manslaughter” then what it reckless behaviour leading to ones own death?
An example is drug overdoses. A person who abuses drugs does so because they want to forget or block out their own (unhappy) life. That this may kill them is not enough to stop them, it may even add to the attraction. Sometimes they do die. Is this death accidental? Or suicide? Or halfway in between?
A lot of bad, [drunk] driving would also fit this pattern.
The amazing thing to me is the difference in suicide rate between rural and urban areas. In the U.S., the suicide rate in the most rural counties is twice what it is in the most urban counties. Is it loneliness or just better access to firearms?
I think the increase of indulgence in other vices helps curtail suicide in a weird way. My assumption is that teens have more easy access to drugs/alcohol which actually might end up reducing suicide rates. The effect of this is then increased death rates over a period…(40s-50s)
Could there be an inverse correlation between risk-taking behaviour and suicidal tendency?
Lesser responsibilities and socially more acceptable when you are 18 as opposed to 45 with two kids….no?
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