This blogpost graphs the trends of youth suicides in Florida from 2006 to 2017, exploring the differences in age, sex, and race among persons 10 years and older.
Abstract
This blogpost explores suicide trends among youth (ages 10 - 24) in Florida between 2006 and 2017, examining the effects of race and gender. The post answers the following questions with respect to population in focus:
Q1 - What is the overall trajectory of youth suicides in FL between 2006 and 2017?
Q2 - What ages are most vulnerable to suicide?
Q3 - What are the most prevalent methods of youth suicide?
Q4 - How do trends compare across the methods of suicide?
Q5 - How do trends compare by race, sex, and methods of suicide?
Data
The suicide data comes from Florida Health Charts and contains suicide mortality between 2006 and 2017, broken down by suicide means, county, sex, age, and race. Additionally, we use Bridged-Race Population Estimates to help with age-specific rate calculations.
The groomed data sets are available for download: FL Suicides and FL Population Estimates.
The observation unit is defined by the first 6 variables: county, year, sex, race, ethnicity, age_group. For each unit, there are two measures: the number of people (n_population) and the number of observed suicide events (n_suicides). The latter is broken down by means of suicide.
Rows: 19,296
Columns: 16
$ county <fct> Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachu...
$ year <int> 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 2006, 200...
$ sex <fct> Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Femal...
$ age_group <fct> 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 10-14,...
$ race <fct> Black & Other, Black & Other, Black & Other, Black & Other, Black & O...
$ ethnicity <fct> Hispanic, Hispanic, Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Non-Hispani...
$ n_population <int> 50, 125, 250, 2410, 3763, 4695, 390, 1038, 2060, 3215, 6993, 14660, 5...
$ n_suicides <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Drugs & Biological Substances` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Other Gases & Vapors` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Hanging, Strangulation, Suffocation` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Firearms Discharge` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Jump From High Place` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Other & Unspec & Sequelae` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ `Other & Unspec Sol/Liq & Vapor` <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ...
$ race_ethnicity <fct> Black & Other + Hispanic, Black & Other + Hispanic, Black & Other + H...Rows: 875,824
Columns: 11
$ county <fct> Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Alachua, Al...
$ year <int> 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 20...
$ sex <fct> Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Female, Fema...
$ age <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7,...
$ race <fct> Black & Other, Black & Other, White, White, Black & Other, Black & Other, White, White, Blac...
$ ethnicity <fct> Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Non-Hispan...
$ n_population <dbl> 9, 413, 61, 672, 6, 368, 66, 602, 11, 401, 57, 655, 9, 364, 76, 629, 8, 363, 51, 633, 3, 383...
$ n_suicides <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,...
$ n_firearms <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,...
$ n_other <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,...
$ race_ethnicity <fct> Black & Other + Hispanic, Black & Other + Non-Hispanic, White + Hispanic, White + Non-Hispan...Another data set, ds2, augmented with CDC population estimates, has very similar structure, but differs from ds1 in three respects:
Instead of
age_groupit featuresage, measured in whole years, providing higher resolutionMortality cause is grouped into two categories
fireamrsandother, as opposed to a more granular, 7-category classification of mortality cause inds1Covers years
2000-2018as opposed to2006-2018inds1
Summary of differences in data sets used in the report:
| data set | suicide means | age resolution | years covered |
|---|---|---|---|
ds1 |
7 | age group | 2006 - 2017 |
ds2 |
2 | 1 year | 2000 - 2018 |
These differences arose from certain limitations in data procurement. We use ds2 to explore age difference with higher resolution, at the expense of reducing resolution in mortality cause.
The combined variable race_ethinicity is the product of the two respective components and was made to be idendical in both data sets:
ds1 %>% distinct(race, ethnicity, race_ethnicity) # A tibble: 4 x 3
race ethnicity race_ethnicity
<fct> <fct> <fct>
1 Black & Other Hispanic Black & Other + Hispanic
2 Black & Other Non-Hispanic Black & Other + Non-Hispanic
3 White Hispanic White + Hispanic
4 White Non-Hispanic White + Non-Hispanic all.equal(
ds1 %>% distinct(race, ethnicity, race_ethnicity) ,
ds2 %>% distinct(race, ethnicity, race_ethnicity)
)[1] "Attributes: < Component \"class\": Lengths (4, 3) differ (string compare on first 3) >"
[2] "Attributes: < Component \"class\": 3 string mismatches >" Q1 - Overall Trend
To begin, let us answer the most fundamental question:
Q1 - What is the overall trajectory of youth suicides in FL between 2006 and 2017?
To aid interpretation we have created an additional metric 1 out of, which is a direct inverse of Rate per 100K, but offers a different perspective on the magnitude of the estimate. The numerical value of this metric answer the question “One in how many individuals commit suicide?”
The number of youth suicides increased by 98 cases, rising from 203 in 2006 to 301 in 2017, constituting a 33% growth. If in 2006 one out every 17.5 thousands committed suicide, in 2017 one out of every 12 thousand individuals between age 10 and 24 took their own life. The demographic growth does not explain the increased number of suicide cases: the rate per 100,000 increased by 45% from 5.74 to 8.34.
Given these general trends for the entire 10 - 24 group, we would like to understand how trends in population growth, suicide count and suicide rate compare among age group:
The 10-14 age group exhibits quite a dramatic decrease in the One out of measure, dwarfing the scale for the other two age groups. We recreate it separately:
Demographic changes deserved to be examined seperately:
Note the sharp change in population count from 2011 to 2013. The 15-19 group dropped, while the 20-24 group grew quite dramatically. A closer examination, shows that while this demographic growth was present in all racial groups, it was particularly pronounced among Non-white + Non-Hispanic youth. One possible explanation could be attributed to cohort effect: disproportionate amount of those in 15-19 group transitioned to 20-24 group during these years, but were not matched by the similar number of 10-14year old transitioning into 15-19 group. Another possible explanation could reside in migration patterns.
Q2 - Suicide across lifespan
Q2 - What ages are most vulnerable to suicide?
To explore whether certain age transitions are associated with increased suicidality, we plot the distribution of suicide events within each year of age among the observed years (2006 - 2018).
There appears to be two plateaux across the lifespan, each preceeded by sharp increase: the first from ages 25 to 40 and another from ages 45 to 60, after which the frequency of suicide declines monotonically.
We see a marked spike in deaths during the 17 to 18 transition.
It appears the majority of deaths in 10-14 groups could be attributed to 13 and 14 year olds (vertial dashed line). The plateau following the age 25 makes theoretical sense: after the turmoils of coming out of age and young adulthood, there life acquires a more stable character.
Also note, that when examining the trends within the 10-24 age group, the relationship between the age and the suicide mortality is very well summarized by a linear model (\(R^2 = .85\)):
Q3 - Prevalent Methods
Q3 - What are the most prevalent methods of youth suicide?
Florida Health Charts captures the causes of suicide mortality using 7 categories. We examine the raw event count and rates per 100,000 rates in the following two graphs:
Notice that two methods gun and hanging consistently explain the most cases of suicide in this age group. Going further, we will collapse the other 5 categories into a single non-gun/hang, so that we have sufficient n to compute reliable rates.
Q4 - Methods across Years
Q4 - How do trends compare across the methds of suicide?
When ignoring race and ethnicity, the average increase in the annual rate of suicide mortality from gun (+0.0996) is 1.5 times higher than that from Hanging (+.0672) and 2.6 times higher than other means (+.0377). Notice also, that mortality from firearms and hanging follow the trajectory closely described by a linear trend: \(R^2\) = .7 and \(R^2\) = .64, respectively.
Q5 - Sex and Ethnicity
Q5 - How do trends compare by race, sex, and means of means of suicide?
The most prominent increase, dwarfing others, is observed among White Non-Hispanic men, rising from 6.8 in 2006 to 11.3 in 2017, constituting a 65% growth. Between these years, the rate per 100,000 in this category was increasing on average by .33 per year.
Among white women of both Hispanic and Non-Hispanic origin, this growth was substantially smaller, about +.06 per year, similar to the growth in the rate of suicide by means other than firearms or hanging. However, suicides by hanging was increasing by +.09 per year.
For Non-White Non-Hispanic women, the largest growth in suicide rates was observed from hanging (+.1), while suicides by other means barely increased.
session information
Click HERE to view report in its native environment of the suicide-prevention-2019 repository.
For the sake of documentation and reproducibility, the current report was rendered in the following environment. Click the line below to expand.
Environment
- Session info -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
setting value
version R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
os Windows 10 x64
system x86_64, mingw32
ui RTerm
language (EN)
collate English_United States.1252
ctype English_United States.1252
tz America/New_York
date 2020-08-30
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