News Release
UW Newsroom
Originally posted 19 AUG 24
Although suicide rates have been relatively lower among Asian Americans, those rates have risen sharply in recent years among younger members of this broad demographic.
A new study reports that suicide rates among young Asian Americans (ages 15-24) vary significantly between different ethnic subpopulations, suggesting that very low rates in some groups might be concealing worryingly high rates in others.
The findings, published today in JAMA Pediatrics, suggest that programs aiming to reduce suicide rates among young Asian Americans should seek to address the needs of these higher-risk groups, said the study’s lead author, Dr. Anthony L. Bui, an acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
“When we’re designing policies and programs to address this problem, we need to think about which communities to focus on and how to make our mental health interventions appropriate, taking into account things like culture, language and community resources,” said Bui, who is also an investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.
Bui and colleagues analyzed data from 2018 to 2021 on U.S. suicide rates among youths ages 15 to 19, and young adults ages 20 to 24, in five ethnic groups: Chinese, Filipinos, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese and “all other.”
The “all other” categorization comprised ethnic groups for which there were not enough cases for individual statistical analysis. They included Bangladeshis, Bhutanese, Burmese, Cambodians, Hmong, Indonesians, Japanese, Laotians, Malaysians, Mongolians, Nepalese, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Taiwanese and Thais.
