Columnist discusses the high rate of suicide among Native youth in Manitoba: the overall numbers are numbing.
Suicide has reached epidemic numbers in Manitoba and across North America. Suicide is like walking blindly off a cliff. The line continues.
Native youth testifies before the U.S. Senate Indian Affair Committee in Washington. Native communities are experiencing an epidemic of suicides both in the U.S. and Canada.
The office of the chief medical officer reports that during the 10-year period between 2003 and 2012, the office of the chief medical officer has recorded 154 deaths by suicide among children and youth between the ages of 12 and 17.
Not that there weren’t even younger children—and older youths—who tried and succeeded. In 2011, when 10 kids who died by suicide—the lowest number in that decade-long period—another 11 youths, aged 18 and 19, also died by suicide.
The medical examiner doesn’t track the deaths by ethnicity, but not surprisingly, aboriginal youth are alarmingly over-represented, to the point of probably being in the majority. Nearly half the deaths are on reserves.
Moreover, in recent years, Manitoba is bucking a long-standing trend that’s known as the gender paradox, where far more males die by suicide, but far more females make the attempt.
