Child health experts are startled by the steady increase of adolescent suicides in North Carolina, with the state experiencing twice the rate of deaths among older children as it did a decade ago.
Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death of children from age 10 to 17, topped only by motor vehicle deaths, according to the joint annual report card on the health of North Carolina children released this week by the advocacy group N.C. Child and the N.C. Institute of Medicine, a think tank.
“This is something we need to be talking about,” said Whitney Tucker, N.C. Child’s research director and one of the report’s primary authors. “This really is an epidemic.”