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Explained: What’s happening with youth suicide rates and what’s beneath the numbers?

Updated: 3 days ago


Explained: What’s happening with youth suicide rates and what’s beneath the numbers?
The latest Unicef report on child wellbeing gave a scathing assessment of New Zealand. Reporter Joel Maxwell explains why its youth suicide figures were challenged, and the sad story beneath the numbers

The latest Unicef report on child wellbeing gave a scathing assessment of New Zealand. Reporter Joel Maxwell explains why its youth suicide figures were challenged, and the sad story beneath the numbers.


Numbers are actually real people, but real people are more than just numbers.

The latest Unicef Innocenti report card placed New Zealand 32nd out of 36 wealthy countries for child wellbeing.


The report’s findings were bad news for New Zealand, but its claim the youth suicide rate - covering those aged 15-19 - was rising, has been challenged by experts from the University of Auckland.


Regardless of the data, associate professor in youth mental health at the University of Auckland, Sarah Hetrick says we should remember the numbers represent rangatahi, young people, “who are no longer here”.


“And that’s devastating. It’s devastating for the whānau, it’s devastating for the community - for our nation.”


These numbers represent people, she says.



Confirmed versus suspected and what it means


However, as she points out, the report used only confirmed suicide numbers - official figures that currently only go to 2020.


A coroner will investigate every suspected suicide and make a formal finding. Until that confirmation, the death is considered a suspected suicide.


Confirmed suicides were rising until 2020, but suspected suicides have since declined. The reason for the lag in confirmation is the wait for coronial inquiries into the deaths to be completed.


Over time, as the numbers in the official online portal show, the confirmed rate usually ends up closely resembling the suspected numbers.


What do the suspected numbers show?


So, perhaps surprisingly, it appears the youth suicide rate has gone down: from a confirmed 20.1 per 100,000 people in 2019 to a suspected 12.2 in 2023.


But perhaps, the bigger surprise to many when looking at the numbers would be the “main and ongoing” problem in Aotearoa, Hetrick says: Inequity.


Māori suicide rates for young people aged 15-24 - confirmed and suspected - have been at or around double the rate of non-Māori for years.


In 2019, the confirmed rate for non-Māori was 16.5 per 100,000 people. For Māori? The confirmed rate was 33.4.


When every loss is a tragedy, how do you calculate the sheer scale of the tragedy, doubled?

Helping deal with the problem was not just about addressing youth suicide alone, Hetrick says. “We need to focus our attention on addressing that inequity.”


It is an “across the board” phenomenon, Hetrick says, of higher rates in all age groups.

Indeed, in the last recorded year the suspected Māori suicide rate for the 25–44 years age group was nearly three times that of non-Māori.


And, for more than a decade at least to the last recorded year, 2023, Māori men had the highest suspected suicide rate in Aotearoa.


Inequity is something that can be so easily ignored, Hetrick says, and it’s not OK - “we need to do something about that”.


Where to get help


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