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Comment by korroziya | Hacker News Reader

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If you actually took the time to read the report, it covered more than just teen girls. It's just that teen boys tend to have much lower reported rates of mental health issues or self harm. This could be because they are actually lower or it could be because they either don't realise they "qualify as depressed" or they won't admit it.

I've linked the report which was included in the very first paragraph of the article.

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/YRBS_Data-Sum...

> It's just that teen boys tend to have much lower reported rates of mental health issues or self harm.

Boys quickly realized nobody gives a shit.

The suicide rate for teen boys is roughly 3x the rate for teen girls. [1] The attempt rate is higher for girls, but boys are more 'effective'.

1: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with what you are saying but it's worth bringing up some more recent data for the attempt rate. The rates of suicide attempts among teen girls was already twice the rate of teen boys (as you already mentioned) however despite that it has increased another 50% despite not seeing a significant uptick in teen boy suicide attempts.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7024e1.htm

> It's just that teen boys tend to have much lower reported rates of mental health issues or self harm.

OP's comment is whataboutism and stupid, but suicide rates in teen boys is vastly higher than girls, and it's not even close. It's like a 2-3 times higher rate, and the fact many don't realize this does demonstrate it is an under-reported problem.

You can't help but think if suicide rates in boys magically managed to drop 5x overnight, the teen girl suicide rate gap would instantly become a national crisis.

The issue is that while successful suicides are higher in boys, suicide attempts are higher in girls. Importantly, the whole "record levels in teen girls" is notable because unlike in boys where suicide attempts went up by ~4%, suicide attempts in girls (which are already ~2x higher) increased by an additional 50% in the last few years.

TLDR: Boys die from suicide much more often than girls but girls make attempts far more often and the rate at which they are doing so is only increasing.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7024e1.htm

> The issue is that while successful suicides are higher in boys, suicide attempts are higher in girls.

No, the issue in this article is just about the levels rising in teen girls and nothing to do with boys, which is why I said OP was offtopic whataboutism.

> Importantly, the whole "record levels in teen girls" is notable because unlike in boys where suicide attempts went up by ~4%, suicide attempts in girls (which are already ~2x higher) increased by an additional 50% in the last few years.

Trends are certainly important. But anybody who says girls have much lower reported rates of mental health issues and self harm is just misinformed.

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