Should-Read: Mike Males: The Truth About Teen Suicide

Should-Read: Regionally-concentrated deaths of despair: Mike Males: The Truth About Teen Suicide: “Trend[s] in suicide rates among teens… track… trend among… adults…

…And what jumps out from the data is not technology use, but geography. Rising suicide is overwhelmingly a feature of rural America, where teenagers have less access to smartphones and use Facebook less than urban teens do….Girls are branded as particularly depressed and suicidal due to modern social-media trends. Yet girls’ suicide remains rare, especially in urban areas, and while it has become more common over the past two decades, its increase closely parallels the increase among women of their parents’ age….

One unexplored factor may be the influence of immigration and racial diversity (more than half of Los Angeles and New York youth have at least one immigrant parent). Asians and Latinos who make up the bulk of immigrants have distinctly lower suicide rates than native-born populations. Emerging analyses show rapidly rising suicide, firearms, and addiction-related “deaths of despair” afflict whites the most in rural and suburban areas where white populations are most concentrated. There are many more suicides among the seven million white rural 35-64 year-old men than among all 40 million American teenagers…