Rates of suicide and suicide attempts among teenagers were at their lowest when schools were closed for the Covid-19 pandemic, a new study published Wednesday shows, pointing to an overall pattern that shows mental health in children and teenagers is at its worst while school is in session.
Researchers with the University of Texas’s Houston School of Public Health studied more than 73,000 emergency department visits and hospitalizations between 2016 and 2021, of which there were an average of 964 suicide-related visits per 100,000 children between ages 10 and 18 each year.
The rate of suicidality among young people, which has been increasing for a decade, rose from 760 per 100,000 children in 2016 to 1,006 in 2019 before an unexpected decrease in 2020—the first year of the pandemic—brought the rate down to 942.
