Citation

Oliveira Alves FJ, Fialho E, Barreto ML, Machado DB. Lancet Reg. Health Am. 2024; 35: e100791.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.lana.2024.100791

PMID

38846806

PMCID

PMC11153940

Abstract

We appreciate Guimarães and colleagues for their engagement with our study and for enriching the discussion on so important matter. Our research utilised data from multiple datasets to examine suicide and self-harm behaviours across various demographics, offering insights for policy development, such as leveraging the use of public data to track trends over time and guide policy decisions. We concur with the authors regarding the socially constructed nature of 'youth,' and we believe that categorizing multiple age ranges, encompasses greater explanatory power across the lifespan. However, this level of granularity is not available in one of used datasets (SINAN),1
and using different age strata among the remaining datasets included in our study would jeopardize comparability. We conducted now additional analyses using mortality data (SIM)1
for ages 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, and 25-29 to examine in great detail youth suicide trends. Despite observing high rates among youth, we did not find a change in the level of the suicide trend during the pandemic (Fig. 1, Table 1). Therefore, based on current data and studies,2
,3
we cannot confirm an acceleration in the increasing trend during the pandemic. We agree with the necessity of implementing more tailored suicide prevention policies aimed to encompass each phase of the youth lifespan. However, since the growth of these rates has remained consistent during COVID-19, it's imperative to consider other factors possibly influencing this trend. These may include socioeconomic status, access to healthcare services, policies to reduce inequalities, and specific vulnerable populations among youth. As demonstrated by Machado et al. (2022), social factors and policies exert a considerable influence in this context, especially among this age group.4
Therefore, it's essential for youth-targeted prevention strategies to also incorporate socioeconomic considerations. ...

Language: en