Almost 46,000 adolescents die from suicide each year, according to a new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The State of the World’s Children 2021; On My Mind: promoting, protecting and caring for children’s mental health – UNICEF’s most comprehensive look at the mental health of children, adolescents and caregivers in the 21st century – found that suicide is among the top five causes of death for children and adolescents between the ages of 10 to 19-years-old.
In a statement on the report, UNICEF said that suicide rates in the Pacific region were significantly higher than the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
“For example, according to the World Health Organization’s 2019 Mortality and Global Health Estimates, Kiribati’s adolescent suicide rate is the highest in the Asia-Pacific region at 36 per 100,000 population, and the Federated States of Micronesia is the second highest at 30 per 100,000 population,” the statement said.
“Vanuatu, Samoa and Solomon Islands also face some of the highest rates in the region,” the This is compared to the majority of the 21 out of 32 countries in the Asia-Pacific region for which data is available, where suicide rates are less than 10 per 100,000 population.”