COLORADO – A new report from the Colorado Attorney General’s office takes a look at what may be causing the state’s youth suicide crisis.
The report is almost 90-pages long and it specifically lists stress factors like rigorous school day schedules that don’t allow children any time to decompress and cyberbullying from social media.
Key findings:
Risk factors attributing to youth suicide:
- Pressure and anxiety about failing.
- Social media and cyber bullying.
- Lack of prosocial activities.
- Lack of connection to a caring adult.
- Judgement and lack of acceptance in the community.
- Substance use, mental health disorders and trauma history.
- Adult suicides in the community impact youth.
Barriers to suicide prevention:
- Not enough resources to effectively implement youth suicide prevention, intervention and postvention activities.
- Each county faces lack of resources and funding for public health and social services programs.
- Lack of equitable distribution of resources across agencies.
- Lack of mental health providers in these communities who accept Medicaid.
- Communities with more mental health resources have few providers who are trained to work with youth or the providers only accept adults.
- Stigma associated with seeking help.
- Stigma against LGBTQ+ individuals limits the places and resources from which those individuals seek help.
Mental Health Colorado says the report is going to be helpful in their efforts to pass about a half-dozen proposals during this year’s state legislature.
Several of those bills include ideas to provide more mental health care for kids in school.
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Focus on the Family launches youth suicide prevention program
