Suicide Rates for Young People-Reply

In Reply. —In using epidemiologic data to understand a phenomenon as complex and multidetermined as suicide among youth, it seems best to examine data over extended time periods to avoid false conclusions based on short-term trends. Suicide rates for 15- to 24-year-olds throughout this century in the United States reached their lowest point in the 1940s and 1950s (National Center for Health Statistics, unpublished data, 1920 to 1985).¹Beginning in the mid-1950s, the suicide rates increased steadily to the high rates of the late 1970s.²,³These suicide death rates, per 100 000 population, are outlined in the following tabulation. This shift represented an increase of 234% for 15- to 24-year-olds. In the years 1978 to 1985, the rates for 15- to 24-year-olds have varied between 11.9 and 12.9 per 100 000 population (for 15-to 19-year-olds, the rates varied between 8.0 and 10.0; for 20- to 24-year-olds, between 14.8