SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION
In June 2021, the CDC reported that, from mid-Feburary to mid-March 2021, “suspected suicide attempt ED visits were 50.6% higher among girls aged 12 to 17 years than during the same period in 2019.” By March, the agency reported survey results showing that, over the prior year, among American high schoolers, ”44.2% experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 19.9% had seriously considered attempting suicide, and 9.0% had attempted suicide.”
Researchers affiliated with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wrote in the September 2021 issue of the journal Pediatrics that, while primary care visits for depression screening fell slightly among 12 to 21 year-old adolescents between the last half of 2019 and the first half of 2020, screeners recorded significantly more patients with suicidal thoughts. Perhaps a sad harbinger of the future, the study noted that “positive suicide risk screens increased” around 16%, showing “a 34% relative increase in reporting recent suicidal thoughts among female adolescents.”
Sadly, Maine CDC data mirror this trend. Emergency department visits “involving suicidal intent” were 24% higher in 2020 and 17% higher in 2021, compared to the 2017-19 quarterly average. Over all of 2020 and 2021, deaths by suicide were about 4% lower than the 2018-19 average, but tragically, spring and summer of 2021 saw 10% more than expected.
The late-2021 spike in suicide in Maine is a likely signal of growing anxiety and depression within the population. A tragic, but sadly predictable outcome of the massive disruptions to daily life and mandated social isolation brought on by lockdown policies pursued by the Mills administration for many months, the repercussions of which are still being felt in 2022.