One Size Does Not Fit All: Making Suicide Prevention and Interventions Equitable for Our Increasingly Diverse...

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States has increased by 33% from 1999 to 2017, and the largest increases are among female individuals aged 10 to 14 years (240% increase) and 15 to 24 years (93% increase).¹ Currently, suicide is the second leading cause of death for youths aged 10 to 24 nationally. Decades of studies have noted that the most consistent predictors of death by suicide are previous self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs), which are disproportionately elevated among Black and Latinx youths. In response, robust efforts have been mobilized to reduce youth suicide, including National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funding for several Zero Suicide Studies, with the aims of reducing suicide for individuals receiving treatment within health care systems. More recently, in 2019, the NIMH generated a report for Identifying Research Priorities in Child Suicide Risk. Despite these collective efforts, limited progress has been made on the development of culturally adapted treatments for suicide, a missing opportunity given the statistics of disproportionate rates of suicide attempts and high lethality attempts among Black and Latinx youths.