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Abstract
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Alves and colleagues1 carried out a remarkable diagnosis of trends related to self-harm and suicide rates in Brazil between 2011 and 2022, identifying sociodemographic and regional characteristics. The article is a call for discussion and an invitation to highlight the need of protecting young people at the centre of the Brazilian public debate, as Abrucio2 claims.
We emphasise that public health policies exclusively for the young population are necessary for society's individual and collective development. It is essential to understand that the condition of youth brings together people with very different sociocultural and economic characteristics. The UN recognises that the concept of “youth” is a social construction because the ages typically associated with this period of life vary considerably from society to society and in different communities of specialists and may correspond to the period between 10 and 24 years (WHO), 15–24 years old (IBGE, UN, and UNESCO) and 12–18 years old (in the Child and Adolescent Statute).3 This conceptual discrepancy reinforces the idea that age groups are just operational definitions, minimiszing that youth experience is very different for ages, classes, and social contexts.
Brazil is experiencing a current demographic transition phase in which there is a decreasing number of children and young people.4 Hence, policymakers can create policies and public health strategies for this age groups without the pressure of expanding demand. By assuming that youth is a phase of bio–psychosocial transition, government policy must make a distinction between early adolescents (10–14 years old), late adolescents (15–19 years old), full-fledged young people (20–24 years old), and young adults (25–29 years old), with young adults as a starting point. Therefore, it is essential to establish which social group is the target of public policy.
Alves and colleagues1 use accurate information from Brazilian information systems and rightly draw attention not only to the most severe event, suicide, but suicide attempts and self-mutilation. An additional limitation of the article is the timid discussion of the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of young people. The suicide trend among young people in Brazil was already growing before the pandemic.5 However, this phase of global crisis accelerated this trend, affecting some subgroups unevenly, such as people who had precarious employment relationships, with temporary contracts, or who received wages for products that depended on social interaction.6 Some hypotheses suggest that population subgroups were affected with different intensities, especially concerning sex and ethnic identity and the situation of the original peoples. ...
Language: en |