Wyoming Child Wellness: How High Is Wyoming’s Youth Suicide Rate?

by Tom Rose

For the last few weeks I have been writing about child wellness in Wyoming. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation Wyoming ranked 19^th in the 2014 annual report which is a lower ranking than our performance of 15^th according to the 2013 report. These rankings are determined according to sixteen measured wellness categories divided among four broader topics. Although an overall ranking of 19^th is nothing to brag about, the area of most concern was Wyoming's health category ranking of 45^th.

Full health rankings are listed in the 2014 report. Nationally there were improvements across all four health categories with Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Utah, and New York ranked in the top five (in order) and Alaska, Nevada, Mississippi, New Mexico and Montana ranking 46^th to 50^th (in order).

The following chart illustrates Wyoming's health category performance between the 2013 and 2014 annual reports, compared to the national average.

Although visually the category of child and teen death rate is the lowest of the four categories, this indicates that more than three out of every one hundred Wyoming children will not live to attain adulthood. While childhood illnesses and accidents are beyond the scope of our focus on at-risk youth, teen suicide rates higher than the national average are an issue that we all should understand more clearly.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Wyoming currently has the highest "age-adjusted" youth suicide rate in the country. The CDC provides a large volume of vital statistics data online although their data formats are anything but user-friendly. A slightly older CDC report from 2012 provides suicide related "facts at a glance".

Among the CDC's key findings:

• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among persons aged 15-24 years, the second among persons aged 25-34 years, the fourth among person aged 35-54 years, and the eighth among person 55-64 years.
• Among 15- to 24-year olds, suicide accounts for 20% of all deaths annually.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) has further analyzed the CDC data, finding that suicide rates nationally have increased since the year 2000 from an overall rate of 10.4 per 100,000 in 2000 to 12.6 in 2013.

According to the AFSP, Wyoming is not the worst state for age-adjusted suicide but we had the fourth highest age-adjusted suicides in 2013 with 21.4 per 100,000, tied with Utah and surpassed only by Alaska (23.1/100,000) and Montana (23.7/100,000). As a matter of interest, states with the least suicides in 2013 were New Jersey (8.0/100,000), New York (8.1/100,000), Massachusetts (8.2/100,000) and Connecticut (8.7/100,000).

Despite the slightly contradictory findings between the AFSP and the CDC it is clear that Wyoming's youth suicide rate is among the nation's highest. An easier user interface for comparing suicides by state is available through USA Life Expectancy.

No matter which source is correct, teen suicide is at an unacceptably high rate for Wyoming youth and we believe this suicide rate to be intrinsically linked to the other risk factors that keep Wyoming's juvenile arrest and incarceration rates also unacceptably high.

Before delving more deeply into the link between dangerous teenage behaviors, arrest, incarceration and suicide, it is highly recommended that the reader take some time exploring the resources of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. While there is no escaping that this is a sober and tragic topic, the AFSP approaches the subject with grace and hope.

I do not write this with the intention of depressing us all with yet another entrenched crisis-level problem for Wyoming. To the contrary, perhaps Wyoming's persistently high historical suicide rate can be used to viscerally demonstrate the need to change the status quo for Wyoming youth. If other states have managed to raise their children to adulthood with literally three-times less risk for either incarceration or death, surely Wyoming can pave new pathways for policies most affecting our at-risk youth.