Editorial: Disparities in Mental Health Care Access Prior to Youth Suicide: Implications for Research and Upstream Prevention

Holly C Wilcox; Taylor C Ryan; Alexandra Frosh

doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2025.01.030

Editorial: Disparities in Mental Health Care Access Prior to Youth Suicide: Implications for Research and Upstream Prevention

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2025 Feb 4:S0890-8567(25)00066-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2025.01.030. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Holly C Wilcox¹, Taylor C Ryan², Alexandra Frosh³

Affiliations

¹ Center for Suicide Prevention, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland; Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. Electronic address: hwilcox1@jh.edu.
² Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
³ Center for Suicide Prevention, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.

PMID: 39914586
DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2025.01.030

Abstract

Despite decades of suicide prevention research and advances in clinical practice, suicide rates among youth-especially youth from minoritized racial, ethnic, and sexual identity groups, and living in rural populations-have rapidly increased since 2010.^1,2 Because of the rising suicide rates in the United States, the US Surgeon General called mental health the "defining health crisis of our time."³ Although there was a decline in the overall suicide rates for people aged 10 to 14 years and those aged 15 to 24 years, with rates falling by 18% and 9%, respectively, in 2022⁴ and reduced suicidal ideation and behavior for some youth in 2023,⁵ suicide is still the second and third leading cause of death for youth in these age groups, showing the magnitude of this public health problem.

Publication types

Editorial