Helping Our Teens Amid a Rise in Suicide Attempts

We need to be proactive about having open conversations about the difficult feelings young people are dealing with

Girls are facing a world that demands behaviors and personas they may not want to adopt. And if they try and fail, the consequences can feel like life and death. Martin Novak/Shutterstock

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported a startling statistic on teen suicide: Emergency room visits for attempted suicide among teenage girls were up 51.6 percent in 2021, as compared to 2019.

So, what’s going on, and more to the point, what is going terribly wrong for our teenage girls? What’s creating such a level of suffering that suicide is seen as a potential solution? And, more urgently, what can we as parents and adults, in general, do about this disturbing new reality?