![]() ![]() According to a study published in the International Journal of Health Services, Black children are about half as likely as white children to get mental health treatment. It aims to determine the reasons for the significant increase in suicide, recommend ways to improve Black children’s access to mental health care and create solutions to better protect and support them.īlack people, including youth, are less likely to receive adequate care for mental health issues for a number of reasons: disparities in access to care, stigma about mental illness and lack of culturally competent mental health practitioners. This awareness of suicidality among Black youth is why the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) established an emergency Taskforce on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health in April 2019. While youth advocates note that these statistics are disturbing, they welcome the much-needed and long-overdue conversation about the well-being of Black children. In a 2015 study published in JAMA Pediatrics, which analyzed data from 1993 through 2012, researchers came to a troubling conclusion: Because there was no significant change in the overall suicide rate among youth, the fact that the suicide rate had decreased among white children but increased among Black children had been obscured. The study, which analyzed data from 2001 through 2015, does not describe reasons for the disparity, but it points to the need for culturally informed interventions. While Black teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are 50 percent less likely to die by suicide than white teens, the suicide rate for Black children between the ages of 5 and 12 is about twice as high as that of their white peers. These two children represent the human faces behind a disturbing study published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2018: Although the overall suicide rate for Black youth is about 42 percent lower than for white youth, that number represents all young people under 17. According to the girls’ families, McKenzie was the victim of racist bullying, and Maddie was taunted because she had ADHD. ![]() But after being tormented at their respective schools last year, the two girls, both 9 years old, died by suicide. McKenzie Adams and Maddie Whitsett should still be here with us today. ![]()
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