New study suggests youth suicide attempts increased globally during COVID-19 pandemic
CTV
'The kids are, in fact, not alright," said Sheri Madigan, a psychologist at the University of Calgary and a co-author of the study.
A University of Calgary study looking at 11 million pediatric emergency room visits across 18 countries found there was a 22 per cent jump in the number of children going to the emergency department for suicide attempts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry on Thursday afternoon, was co-authored by researchers in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Dublin.
The data compared ER visits for children before the pandemic to the time frame between January 2020 and July 2021.
"There’s been a debate during the pandemic as to whether the kids are alright or not alright. Now that more data have been published and analyzed, we can more precisely answer that question. The kids are, in fact, not alright," said Sheri Madigan, a psychologist at the University of Calgary and a co-author of the study.
The research found the number of overall visits to the ER by children went down during the first part of the pandemic, yet visits related to attempted suicides and suicide ideation increased.
"There's been a gradual upward trend over the last decade showing that kids are going to the emergency department for suicide attempts at a greater and greater rate each and every year," Madigan told CTV News.
"What we observed in our study is that there was a substantive increase over and above what you would expect based on trends."
