Suicide

Are gifted and talented children and adolescents more prone to suicide than their non-gifted peers are? Presently, this question has proven difficult to answer. Tracy Cross and his colleagues have found that this is because of the complexity in defining giftedness, the lack of a designation of giftedness in data colleted on suicide, confidentiality diminishing access to information, psychological autopsies being expensive and time consuming, and the lethality of suicide causing certain information to be collected after a suicide completion. That being said, it can be assumed that gifted youth complete suicide at rates commensurate with the general population, at the minimum. Suicide is listed as the third leading cause of death in adolescents between the ages of 15 and 24. For youth ages 10 to 14, suicide rates increased by 51 percent between 1981 and 2004, according to the American Association of Suicidology. Internationally, suicidal rates are 0.5 for girls and 0.9 for boys per 100,000 in children between the ages of 5 and 14. It increases to 12.0 for girls and 14.2 for boys per 100,000. No matter what country a young person may call home, suicide is listed as a common cause of death in adolescents. This entry discusses suicide risks and warning signs, along with theories of suicide and possible interventions, with regard to youth in general and gifted youth in particular.