Posted on 06/10/2004 1:35:29 PM PDT by TC Rider
A new report finds that suicidal young people are less likely to use firearms to take their own lives, but the survey finds little comfort in the trend because they are turning to more readily available methods.
In the last decade, suffocation -- notably hanging -- has overtaken firearms as the most common way for adolescents to kill themselves, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
The greatest change was among youngsters between 10 and 14 years old, where suicide by suffocation occurred twice as frequently as suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot. Firearms were the most common method before 1997, the report found.
Among those 15 to 19 years of age, however, suffocation suicides also increased, but firearms remained the method of choice in 2001.
In other findings, the CDC reported that young people who attempted suicide were four times as likely to have been involved in a fistfight in the previous year. However, a third survey found that those who committed a school-related suicide between 1994 and 1999 had no history of fighting or otherwise getting into trouble with the police.
The report in the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report had some good news: Overall, the suicide rate among people 10 to 19 years of age dropped from 6.2 per 100,000 people in 1992 to 4.6 per 100,000 in 2001.
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Copyright © 2004 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved. Last updated 6/10/2004
/sarcasm
Guess there'll be a waiting period and backround check to buy rope now. Sigh.
What's wrong with these kids?
Not good news for the Brady/VPC crowd.
We must ban ropes!
Hanging only kills by suffocation if you do it wrong. Stupid kids can't even hang themselves properly.
...(rant on the state of modern education to follow)...
So9
No noose is good noose.
Wow that would be a fast shot to get more than one shot off before the melon explodes
The article gives the impression that there is an epidemic of hanging suicides among yutes, then we learn in the last sentence that the overall suicide rate among yutes has declined dramatically.
The glass is 90% full, but you must act like it is 10% empty so you can say that IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT.
Close the rope-show loophole!
All I wanted was a Pepsi. Just a Pepsi.
Didn't the liberals realize that making guns harder to get their hands on wouldn't keep the kids from being suicidal? Do they not account for shifts in human behavior when they make these laws?
I'm surprised its not pills, though. Hanging? Ugh!
Of course, guns are illegal for teens. Wouldn't want to have a criminal record, you know.
for a while it was jumping off buildings, then drugs, the gass from a stove, then guns, now hanging .....
What is next? Just keep watching MTV for the next death fad.
Yeah. If they read the right medical journals, they'd know the best way to manage it is a "long-drop" hanging--dropping from greater than body height. "Short-drop" cases have an excellent prognosis as long as the suicidee is still alive by the time they reach the hospital.
On the whole, I'd prefer they do it this way rather than guns since they're more likely to botch the job!
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
- Dorothy Parker
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