A poisonous trend among kids

Record numbers of young people in the U.S. are trying to kill themselves with poison, new research has found. Suicide attempts of this kind have more than doubled among people under 19 in the past decade, and tripled among girls and women ages 10 to 24. While the suicide rate across all age groups and genders in the U.S. is increasing, the sharp rise in poison-related suicide attempts by young people has left researchers baffled. “There’s something very alarming happening here,” co-author Henry Spiller, from the Central Ohio Poison Center, tells The Washington Post. After analyzing 19 years of nationwide data, the researchers found that suicide-by-poison attempts remained essentially flat among children ages 10 to 15 until 2010, and then skyrocketed from 2011 to 2018—increasing 141 percent overall. The substances used were typically household drugs such as Tylenol, antihistamines, and ADHD medication. Spiller says there is no obvious explanation for the sudden increase, but suspects the spread of smartphones among youngsters—and the access it gives them to information on suicide—may be a factor. ■