CT Mirror: Connecticut Is Seeing a Rise In Youth Suicides
Quite heartbreaking : A few years ago, Dr. Steven Rogers, a physician in the emergency department at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, started a new initiative. He wanted to screen every child age 10 and up who passed through the department for suicide risk. That’s around 15,000 kids a year. “There’s lots of stigma around this question,” Rogers said. “I’d rather be able to identify kids who are low risk and need help versus when they’re an imminent risk or have already made an attempt.” In Connecticut, 11 children have died by suicide so far this year, nine of those in the past few months. To put that in perspective, just six children 17 and younger died by suicide in all of 2023. “I hope this isn’t a canary in the coal mine,” said Gov. Ned Lamont in late August at a roundtable event on youth suicide. There were no clusters of deaths, according to the Office of the Child Advocate, and deaths were distributed across the state, as well as among races and...