Youth Suicide Statistics and Prevalence

Suicide in Young People

• Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in young people aged 10-34.
• Suicide rates in youth ages 10-14 years rose 16% since 2017.

Suicide Ideation in Children

• Death by suicide prior to age 10 is rare, but the prevalence of suicide ideation (SI) and attempts may be higher.
• Relatively high rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors have been reported in clinical samples of young children.
• Little data have been available regarding the prevalence of non-fatal suicidal thoughts and behaviors in middle childhood in the general population.

Brain Functioning and Suicide Risk

• The salience network (SN) and default mode network (DMN) have been identified as particularly relevant for suicidal thoughts and behaviors in adolescents and adults.
• The anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are prominent nodes of the SN, which integrates sensory, emotional, and cognitive information.
• The posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and precuneus are key nodes of the DMN, which is primarily active during rest, and important for self-referential mental processing and spontaneous cognition.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

• fMRI can be used to characterize the functional connectivity of different brain regions within a network and brain activation patterns in response to particular stimuli.
• Resting-state fMRI readily identifies the SN by the age of two, although the SN undergoes protracted developmental changes in connection strength, with increasing within-network coherence into early adulthood.

Salience Network (SN) and Suicide Risk

• SN dysfunction has been linked to vulnerability for psychopathology across the lifespan.
• Lower within-network resting-state functional connectivity of the SN is related to SI in adolescence and lifetime severity of SI and suicide attempts in adulthood.
• Lower activation of the anterior cingulate gyrus (a key SN node) in response to viewing angry faces was associated with past suicide attempts in adolescents.

Default Mode Network (DMN) and Suicide Risk

• DMN dysfunction is implicated in most major forms of psychopathology across the lifespan.
• Depressed adolescents with current SI demonstrated lower ventral DMN RSFC than depressed adolescents with no SI and healthy controls.
• Lower DMN RSFC correlated with lifetime severity of SI in adolescents with depression.
• In adults, lower DMN RSFC has been associated with current SI and suicide attempt history in individuals with depression.

Explore statistics and prevalence data related to youth suicide, focusing on individuals aged 10-34 years. Learn about the rise in suicide rates among youth aged 10-14 and the prevalence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in this age group.