A child plays on a beach in Half Moon Bay in California, the United States, Feb. 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)
The new findings paint a distressing picture of the problem of youth violence in general, and come after gun-related injuries specifically became the leading cause of death among those 1 to 19 years old in 2020.
NEW YORK, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Rates of violent death among young people in the United States have been on the rise over recent years, with the youth suicide rate up nearly 60 percent in the past two decades and the youth homicide rate up nearly 20 percent within the same time frame, reported U.S. News and World Report on Thursday, citing a new study.
The analysis, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), points to varied trends over the period but shows the suicide rate among people 10 to 24 years old rose from 6.9 deaths per 100,000 individuals in 2001 to 11 per 100,000 in 2021, fueled by a more than 60 percent increase since 2007.
The homicide rate among youth, at 9 per 100,000 in 2001, sat at 10.7 per 100,000 by 2021, punctuated by a 60 percent rise between 2014 and 2021. Prior to that upward trend, the rate among people 10 to 24 years old had been in fairly steady decline for almost a decade, dropping nearly 30 percent from 2006 to 2014.
An NCHS spokesman was quoted by U.S. News and World Report as saying that the largest one-year increase in the youth homicide rate, which occurred with a 37 percent spike between 2019 and the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, occurred in tandem with an increase among the general population as well.
The study also showed the annual rate of homicide among youth remained higher than the rate of suicide from 2001 until 2010. The suicide rate then surpassed the homicide rate each year, until similar rates for both began to occur by 2020.
"The new findings paint a distressing picture of the problem of youth violence in general, and come after gun-related injuries specifically became the leading cause of death among those 1 to 19 years old in 2020. The increase in suicide additionally highlights the burgeoning mental health crisis among young people, the roots of which predate the stress and isolation caused by COVID-19," said the report. ■
