Is Life Unlivable for Youth in Post-DEI America?: Understanding Rising Suicide Rates Across Diverse Youth Groups Through Traditional Suicide Paradigms

TL;DR

This paper explores how sociopolitical stressors in America contribute to rising youth suicide rates across diverse groups.

Contribution

The paper identifies shared pathways to suicide among diverse youth groups despite differing sociopolitical contexts.

Findings

Youth of color, LGBTQ+ youth, and young men face unique sociopolitical stressors linked to increased suicidality.

Shared pathways to suicide exist across disparate youth groups due to systemic oppression and deregulation.

Universal school-based social emotional learning is proposed as a beneficial intervention for mental health outcomes.

Abstract

We pose the question of whether life has become unlivable for the young in America amidst the current political climate, which has systematically deregulated our social structures that safeguard against oppressive and unjust practices. What leads the young to become demoralized to the point of wanting to end their lives? Drawing on several established psychosocial models for suicide, including those of Durkheim, Joiner, and Butler, we highlight how groups of youth as disparate as youth of color, LGBTQ+ youth, and young men experience unique sociopolitical stressors that contribute to increased suicidality. We argue that despite differences in their contexts, they experience shared pathways to suicide. At a time when U.S. funding cuts threaten to dismantle the progress made in recent years to address structural racism and sexism, we also make a case for the importance of mental health clinicians’ engagement in advocacy work that recognizes the sociopolitical influences on mental health and highlight universal school-based social emotional learning (USB SEL) as one beneficial intervention to target mental health outcomes across disparate youth groups.