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- [Voiceover] Part of the Surgeon General Advisory was
they gave some statistics around the fact
that suicidal ideation, or I think it was ER visits
among teenage girls was a little more than 50% higher
than in previous years,
versus the increase in teenage boys was around 6 or 7%.
Why do you think it's so much higher
in teenage girls and boys?
- Yeah, this is a really alarming trend that we're seeing,
and it's certainly a realistic trend
that we're seeing with the data,
with the ER visits and whatnot.
And for the most part, over the course of, since 1975,
I think there's been some really, really tremendous studies
over the course of the previous 40 years.
And for the most part,
what we've generally seen is that boys to girls,
as far as a ratio of suicide attempts and suicidality
is about 80% to 20% more boys than girls
completing suicide, unfortunately.
However, since 2007, we just saw this incredible uptick,
we saw this really scary phenomenon
where the gap started to narrow.
So it was 80% to 20% boys to girls,
but what we started to see, for example,
is every year, the increase in females
started outpacing the increase in boys.
So, for example, we started to see
between the age of 10 and 14,
a 12% increase per year since 2007,
as opposed to maybe a 5 to 7% increase in boys since 2007.
So what ended up happening is that gap was closed
and we just started seeing more girls
unfortunately completing suicide.
And for the most part, we have to look at
what's driving this and why is this even happening?
But when we look at suicide completion,
the statistics tend to support that boys or males
tend to use more lethal means.
There was always this statistic
that showed that females tend to attempt suicide
more than boys, believe it or not,
but the means of attempt were reversible
and they would survive.
So, for example, for a very long time,
it was overdose or superficial injury
with regard to females.
But boys would do things like,
it's just horrible to even talk about,
like hanging or firearms or asphyxiation,
which were much more lethal.
And this horrible trend that we're seeing now
is that the girls are starting to incorporate
some of these more lethal means,
which is increasing that completion of suicide for females
over the course of the previous years
at a very, very alarming rate.
- [Voiceover] So how do you account for that?
What risk factors are young women facing now
that you think is accounting for more of this increase?
- Yeah, so there are some definite theories
behind this increase and, I think
we certainly know that social media
has been a driving force in depression, anxiety
and possibly even an increase
in suicide attempts and suicidal ideation.
So some of the research gathered shows that,
for whatever reason, young girls, females
tend to be more affected
by the negative effects of social media.
And again, that's a very significant driving force
for depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms
and even suicidal ideation.
So we think that females can be more influenced
by those negative effects of social media,
but we also noticed when we look at studies
that young girls have undoubtedly stated
that they feel more pressure to achieve in the recent years,
they feel more pressure academically
and competitively amongst their peers
and females are starting,
young females, adolescents are starting to worry about
how am I even going to make a living.
So that seems to be more of a burden
and more of a stressor for young females
than it has been previously,
so those are some theories as to why this has happened.
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