Suicide rates have climbed again following a two-year decline, U.S. health officials report.

The new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also described a shift in demographics of those dying by suicide in 2021.

While rates among white Americans have been higher for decades than those among Black and Hispanic Americans, rates are now rising in minority populations. The report also noted that suicides are happening more often in younger minorities, compared to older white adults.

In 2021, suicide and homicide rates for children and young adults ages 10 to 24 in the US were the highest they’ve been in decades, according to a recent report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Suicide and homicide were the second and third leading causes of death for this age group, both causing about 11 deaths for every 100,000 people ages 10 to 24. The homicide rate for this age group in 2021 was the highest it’s been since 1997, and the suicide rate was the highest on record, since 1968.

Suicide rates surpassed homicide rates for this age group in 2010 and have continued rising for the past decade. But a large spike in homicide rates during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic brought the rates for both types of violent death together for the first time in a decade.

Earlier research has found that there has been a steady increase in the number of children who are seen in emergency rooms for suicidal thoughts, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, and nearly half don’t get the follow-up care they need.

“That’s what we’re unpacking at this point, is cumulative stress,” Joe said. “People couldn’t bury people the way they needed to bury them. They couldn’t grieve in the same way. You couldn’t gather in the same way, to cope with these losses. So, there’s a lot of unattended-to grief as well.

”The suicide rate among Black people increased by 19.2% between 2018 and 2021, from 7.3 to 8.7 per 100,000, and it climbed most quickly among Black people ages 10 to 24, at 36.6%.

That suicides are occurring at progressively younger ages in nonwhite people is troubling, Joe said.“We tend to lose older generations of whites when it comes to suicide,” he said. “But among people of color, it’s always the young, not out of the fourth, third or even approaching the fifth decade of life.”Suicide rates rose 5% overall in people ages 25 to 44, and by even more among Black, Hispanic, multiracial and Alaska Native people.

For white people, the suicide rate actually dropped, from 18.1 to 17.4 per 100,000, a decline of 3.9%. White people still comprised the most suicides by sheer numbers, with 36,681 deaths reported, representing three-quarters of the total.

Suicide rates did decrease among older Americans ages 45 to 65, dropping 12.4% overall with drops among white, Hispanic and Asian people in that age group. In 2021, there were a total of 48,183 suicides in the United States, close to the peak of 48,344 in 2018. Financial stress, social isolation, substance use, barriers to health care and access to lethal means like firearms are among the factors that can lead to suicide, researcher Deborah Stone, lead behavioral scientist at CDC, told the  Times.

The “remarkable weakening of our mental health response system,” has made it extraordinarily challenging to get care for children and adolescents in crisis, chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, Mitch Prinstein, told the  Times. “It’s just become completely untenable,” he said. “We shouldn’t be surprised that some kids are experiencing a worsening of their symptoms to the point where suicide is more common.”

So what can we do? We can advocate for more mental health resources and funding, open a dialogue about this increasingly alarming behavior and trend, increased screening, greater awareness of risk and cultural factors, and finding help through counselors and therapists, not just in the emergency room.   We need to be talking about this rise of suicidal behavior and why/ what we can do about it.  Read this article on the alarming trend and what we can do to help bring down suicide rates.  It’s more than just mental health care.  Click here to read.