*Tragically, a percentage of teens have always been inclined and vulnerable to suicide ideation. Everyone experiences this while they navigate through all the emotional pitfalls they face while growing up. While this is a fact, a recent study in the US found that Black teens get the worst of it all.

Statistics

Deaths by suicide among female Black teens were found to have risen by 182% in the ages from 13 to 19. The rates of male Black teens didn’t almost double but did increase by 60% all the same during the very same period.

This study had also identified the most common methods of suicide on the basis of suicide attempts during the year. These methods included strangulation and firearms – which were only the most lethal of them all.

The Highest Rate in the Nation Can Be Found in Georgia

Between 2016 and 2018, Georgia was found to have the highest rates of suicide in the nation. The ratio stood at about 5.8 suicides per 100,000 people which were closely followed by Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Texas.

In the same period, Black teen males had committed suicide using firearms and their fatality rate stood at about a deadly 90%. The rest had resorted to strangulation and their fatality rate stood at about 60%.

Female Black teens, on the other hand, had mostly resorted to suffocation or strangulation and about 56% of them turned out to be fatal. About 21% of these young women had used firearms to do the same.

What Do These Findings Reflect?

These findings signified the urgent need for mental health services in places like urban school districts and the fact that parents should secure firearms in their home where their teenage children won’t have access to them. If these lethal forms of suicide aren’t accessible to these children and they are given proper counseling for their individual periods of crisis, then these dangerously impulsive decisions will pass.

With adequate and appropriate mental health services in place, these young people might actually have their chances of suicide ideation significantly reduced. While this won’t really solve the problems that are faced by Black teens, their community will have taken the first step towards reducing severe self-violence.

These children will then live on to see another colorful morning after a morbid night.

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