The connections that save lives: What Utah's new teen suicide study reveals

SALT LAKE CITY — A new study from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services took an in-depth look at the causes of teen suicide.

The report, which will be released in conjunction with Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, showed mental illness did not play as large a role as believed.

Michael Staley was the suicide prevention research coordinator at the Utah DHHS Office of the Medical Examiner. He told the KSL News "Daily" podcast, "The rate of suicide had plateaued."

"When somebody gets the news out of an OR or an ER that their person has stabilized, they think, 'Oh, thank goodness.' But this is not where we're at in Utah. We don't want to stabilize at this really high rate of suicide," he said.

He said he was "glad that the numbers are not continuing to increase as they did through the 2010s, but they're really high still, and we know that this is impacting so many families and communities and workplaces, and we have a lot of work to do."

"We often look to poor mental health as the reason why people die by suicide. And for some people, that's true. But among youth in this study, it really wasn't one of the main drivers," Staley said.

"There was a really small number of youth who were living with significant mental illness. There were … about a third of them that had mild depression or symptoms of mild depression, whether or not it was diagnosed," he said.

He said far more common was "childhood maltreatment," including physical abuse, sexual abuse and emotional abuse. "Almost 80% of these youth had experienced at least one form of child maltreatment and 15% of the youth in this study had experienced all three kinds of maltreatment."

"Almost half experienced physical abuse, 1 in 5 experienced sexual abuse, and almost 3 in 4 experienced emotional abuse (including neglect)," according to Staley.

"Utah continually is among the top 10 states in the U.S. for its high rate of suicide along with our Rocky Mountain neighbors. So, this is largely recognized as an Intermountain West problem, not just a Utah problem," Staley added.

Laura Leavitt, DHHS youth suicide study coordinator for the Office of the Medical Examiner, told the KSL "Daily" podcast, "The ultimate goal of this study is to find ways where we can better intervene, better opportunities for us to prevent these deaths, especially in youth. So, the study looked at … youth who died by suicide over a period of four years. We talked to parents, we talked to peers, we talked to really anyone that would talk to us about these youth, their context, their lives."

"We know risk increases when there's a relationship breakup, when there's a job loss, when any kind of friendship conflict happens, and things like appetite problems, sleep disruption, the warning signs really are varied. And what we found with these youth was there was not a single youth that exhibited every warning sign that we asked about or even most of them," she said.

Leavitt said change was the most important factor.

"Whether it was social connection, whether it was appetite and sleep, something seemed a little bit off and that's a great opportunity to intervene to let a teen know in your life that you notice, 'Hey, you're not hanging out with your friends as much as you used to. What's going on? Or you seem distracted. What's going on?'" She said that shows that you care, that you've noticed when something was happening to them.

About 40-45% of the youth in the study were using alcohol or marijuana at levels researchers described as "problematic" even by adult standards, Staley said. "They were self-medicating trauma, depression, anxiety, or loneliness — not using recreationally."

Well-child medical visits do not systematically ask youth about substance use, and Staley said that needs to change.

He says one of the largest risk factors was a teen's relationship status.

"About half of the youth in the study were in a romantic relationship at the time or leading up to the time that they died by suicide. And about two-thirds of those relationships were on the verge of breaking up or had just ended," he said.

"When you dig a little deeper into what was going on, we're seeing social isolation. So, when a young person gets into a romantic relationship, their friends say that's when they stopped hanging out with us. That's when their parents say that's when they really stopped talking to us or being … upstairs and part of the family in the evening. They really were focusing all their time and energy into this romantic relationship."

He said families should "promote and encourage" teens to maintain friendships they had before their romantic relationship and continue to participate in family activities "because teenage relationships don't have a great statistical success rate. If that relationship ends, then there's somewhere to turn to."

Leavitt said, "We know that no one can do everything, but we do firmly believe that everyone can do something. Even if it's just noticing the teens around you at church, in your neighborhood, in a school environment, anywhere where you are interacting with youth. Making sure that these youth don't go friendless and that there's at least one environment where they feel unconditionally accepted and valued and seen. That's an action that everyone can take."

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