Of the 169 suicides,
124 (73.4%) were aged 15–17 years (average 13.8 suicides per year). However, 44 suicides (26.0%) were of children aged 10–14 years (average 4.9
suicides per year), and one was a child aged 9 years (2011). For the most recent year (2012-13), for young people aged 15–17 years (10 deaths),
suicide was the second-leading external cause of death (5.5 per 100,000). However, suicide was the leading external cause of death for children aged
10–14 years (12 deaths, 4.1 per 100,000 children), and the rate was the highest
since 2004. Of
these 22 suicides, 15 (68%) were male and 7 female. Only 6 suicides
(27%) were from an indigenous background (17.1 per 100,000), but this rate was
5.5 times higher than the non-Indigenous (3.1 per 100,000). Only 1 of the 22 was from a remote background, with 7 from regional
Queensland, and the rest (14) from metropolitan backgrounds. Eleven were from
low to very low socioeconomic backgrounds, with 5 from moderate, and 6 from
high or very high.
Eleven (50%) were known to the child protection system, (7.1
per 100,000) a rate 3.9 times more than expected. There were 18 hangings, 1
gunshot, 1 jumping from height and 1 in front of a train, and 1 poisoning. The
number of hangings seems surprising, and challenges our thinking; our
expectation might have been that children would take medication in an extreme
moment of frustration or emotional pain. But to organise a hanging perhaps
suggests the more deliberate nature of these deaths.
Do the Queensland
rates differ from the national rate or from other states and territories?
It is
complicated. Queensland figures are from 1st July to the following
end of June, while ABS figures are specific to a given year. The latest report
from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/3303.0~2012~Main%20Features~Age~10010)
is from beginning 2008 to the end of 2012 (5 years), for ages 5-14 years, with
a total of 57 suicides from all states and territories, 14 from Queensland. The
equivalent number for the same 5 years in the CCYPCG report could be up to 26
deaths, so there may be a disparity.
Northern Territory
After an extensive online search, I cannot find parallel figures for Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania or the ACT. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful.
The National Children’s Commissioner, Ms Megan Mitchell, has recently completed a national consultation on how children and young people under 18 years can be better protected from intentional self-harm and suicidal behaviour.(https://www.humanrights.gov.au/about/commissioners/ms-megan-mitchell-national-childrens-commissioner) Findings are
scheduled be reported in her 2014 Statutory Report to Parliament. One can only
hope that she has access to exact figures from all states and territories to
compare with ABS data.
One real issue for child
suicide is perhaps not the numbers, as much as the human tragedy. The Queensland
Commissioner, in noting that half the children were known to the child
protection system, suggested these children often “live in circumstances
characterised by substance misuse, mental health problems, lack of attachment
to significant others, behavioural and disciplinary issues or a history of
abuse or violence”. This harks back to many comprehensive reports on how a child can get to
the point of suicide. In one of the earliest, David Shaffer (1974) found the most common
precipitants were conflict or a ‘disciplinary crisis’ with parents, teachers or
police, fights with peers or friends. Annette Beautrais (2001) reports somewhat
more complexity, while Dervic and colleagues (2008) note that precipitants may
be less easy to identify and child suicide seems to have a brief stress-suicide
interval.
If this latter
point is true, then more or better services may not solve the problem; we may
not get to see the child in time to assist change. We need to focus our
prevention efforts more broadly on assisting parents to understand the
consequences of trauma, and make changes. We also must assist schools to
improve their efforts toward adopting more social and emotional learning
programs aimed at helping children toward better mental health, with strategies
like mindfulness to work through conflict and trauma.
References
Beautrais, A.L. (2001) Child and young adolescent
suicide in New Zealand.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
35(5): 647-53.
Dervic, K., Brent, D.A. and Oquendo, M.A. (2008)
Completed Suicide in Childhood. Psychiatric Clinics of North America 31(2):
271-91.
Shaffer, D. (1974) Suicide in Childhood and Early
Adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 15(4):
275-91.
