AMA adopts new policies to address recent increase in youth suicide

The AMA has adopted new policies to address the recent increase in youth suicide and to identify evidence-based interventions and other factors for reducing youth suicide risk.

“We were deeply concerned by the dramatic increases we were seeing in youth suicide and suicide risk even before the mitigation measures and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” AMA board member Willie Underwood III, MD, MSc, MPH, said in a press release. “As a nation we must do everything we can to prioritize children’s mental, emotional and behavioral health and step up our efforts to prevent suicide and mitigate suicide risk among our nation’s youth.”

The policies were adopted during the Special Meeting of the AMA House of Delegates. The adoption follows a recent CDC study that found a 31% increase in the proportion of ED visits related to mental health for youth aged 12 to 17 years during 2020 compared with 2019. Further, CDC data showed increased rates of suicide ideation and suicide attempts in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic vs. 2019 rates. According to the release, these “staggering statistics” prompted the AMA to publicly call attention to the growing trend toward a decline in child and adolescent mental health in the U.S. related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among other initiatives, the AMA policies will aim to achieve the following:

• encourage the development and spread of educational resources and tools for physicians that address effective suicide prevention;

• support collaboration with federal agencies, relevant state and specialty medical societies, schools, public health agencies, community organizations, and other stakeholders to increase awareness of the rise in youth and young adult suicide;

• encourage efforts to offer youth and young adults better and more equitable access to treatment and care for depression, substance use disorder, and other disorders that play a role in suicide risk;

• encourage further research for a better understanding of suicide risk and effective prevention efforts among youth and young adults, especially in higher risk sub-populations, such as Black, LGBTQ+, Hispanic/Latino and Indigenous/Native Alaskan youth and young adult populations, as well as among youth and young adults with disabilities; and

• support increased screening for adverse childhood experiences in medical settings because of the intersectionality of these experiences with significant increased risk for suicide, negative substance-use related outcomes and numerous downstream negative health outcomes.

“Physicians play a vital role, and we must ensure that all physicians who see youth patients, not solely pediatric psychiatrists and addiction medicine physicians, have the ability, capacity and access to the tools needed to identify when a young person is experiencing a period of imminent risk and help prevent suicide attempts,” Underwood said in the release.

Reference:

AMA. AMA adopts policy to help address staggering increases in youth suicide and save lives. Available at: https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-adopts-policy-address-staggering-increases-youth-suicide. Accessed June 17, 2021.