Suicide among children and adolescents in Canada: Trends and sex differences, 1980-2008.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young Canadians (10Ð19 years of age) , a disturbing trend that has shown little improvement in recent years. Our objective was to examine suicide trends among Canadian children and adolescents. Our results show that suicide rates in Canada are increasing among female children and adolescents and decreasing among male children and adolescents. Limiting access to lethal means has some potential to mitigate risk. However, suffocation, which has become the predominant method for committing suicide for these age groups, is not amenable to this type of primary prevention.

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