When black teenagers silently cry out for help
Conversation with Dr. Carl Bell on why African-American teenage suicide continues to rise
Writer’s note: The following interview was originally conducted for AC/Yahoo Contributor Network in December 2009. While cleaning out old interviews (audio and video), I was disturbed to find that the numbers here and the conversation are as relevant today as they were then. The original interview has been repurposed with minimal edits outside of including 2023 stats.
In 2009, suicide was the third leading cause of death for African-American teenagers, ages 15 to 24. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the suicide rates among persons aged 10–24 years increased significantly during 2018–2021 among Black persons (from 8.2 to 11.2; a 36.6% increase).
According to the American Association of Suicidology, firearms are the most dominant way for African-Americans, regardless of age or gender, to commit suicide—67% for males and 40% for females ages 15 to 24. African-Americans are also less likely to use drugs during a suicide attempt, and depression is more pronounced with African-Americans.
Recommended Read: "Is the child bad or is it ADHD?" Chicago Defender, June 12, 2009
Warning signs of a suicidal person include threatening to hurt or kill him/herself, talking about hurting or killing him/herself, looking for ways to hurt him/herself by seeking weapons or medication, talking or writing about death, expressing hopelessness and/or experiencing rage, uncontrolled anger and seeking revenge.
But sometimes recognizing someone who is suicidal is not as simple as these red alerts.
“The reality is—and this is the hard part for people to understand—even though suicide is the third leading cause of death in teenagers, it’s actually quite rare when you’re talking about 10 out of 100,000 black teenagers,” said Dr. Carl Bell, co-author of “Suicide and Homicide Among Adolescents” and chapters in “Black Psychiatry” in the 1983 “Mental Health and People of Color” book.
Dr. Bell, M.D., F.A.P.A., F.A.C.P., is the president and CEO of the Community Mental Health Council, the Director of the Institute for Juvenile Research in the University of Illinois’ Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, and a U of I professor of psychiatry and public health. He was also on the 1994 Institute of Medicine’s Suicide Committee.
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“Trying to identify or profile the child that is at risk for suicide is pretty hard to do because you’ve got the 5,000 attempters,” Dr. Bell continued. “Then you’ve got the 20,000 depressed out of 100,000 so what we came up with was this notion that risk factors are not predictive factors due to protective factors.”
The protective factors are family, friends and a community that cares about this teenager enough to stop him or her from trying to commit suicide.
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African-American teenage suicide is even harder to predict because of the mix of growing pains that intermingle with possible mental conditions.
“The problem with teenage suicide is that teenagers are impulsive because their brains develop from the bottom up and from the inside out,” Dr. Bell said. “So the first part of the brain that’s developed are the fight, flight, freeze parts of their brain. Their reactive emotional centers are the first things that are working at 100%. The thinking part of the brain—the judgment, the wisdom—the brake part of the brains don’t develop until you’re 26. So you’ve got teenagers who are all gasoline and no brakes essentially.”
With teenagers being more impulsive, a strong support system is necessary.
“They have governors on the carburetor,” Dr. Bell said. “You’ll only get a certain amount of gas. That’s the role that the village or community, parents, school, police, adults have is to be that brake system. There are family members that care about you. There are communities that care. There’s having social and emotional skills around self-control.”
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However, there’s a stigma in the African-American community that black women are naturally strong and black men are too macho to do something like commit suicide. Oftentimes, signs of depression or suicidal tendencies may go unnoticed by the village, assuming these teenagers have a “break system” to watch over them.
And even if the stereotypical rationales are eliminated, loved ones must be willing to get the proper medical care for a teenager who seems to be in trouble. If a teenager shows the warning signs of someone who is suicidal or depressed, it is recommended to seek medical attention regardless of whether the guardian has proper health coverage.
“There are emergency rooms where [doctors] have to see people,” Dr. Bell said. “A lot of people get their medical care from the emergency room. That’s the law. You cannot turn somebody down like that.”
“To have a depression, you’ve got to be depressed for two solid, full weeks,” Dr. Bell said. “You are crying, losing sleep, losing weight. You can’t think. Your thoughts are slowed down. You can’t concentrate. You’re depressed or irritable. You’re having crying spells. You don’t have a sense of humor, and you have no hope for the future.”
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However, according to Dr. Bell, obstacles in life don’t always lead up to suicide. A person who commits suicide may not do so because of what someone else did to him or her.
“People have this idea that it’s life stressors that cause depression, or it’s life stressors that cause people to be suicidal,” Dr. Bell said. “Usually 95% of the people who commit suicide are depressed. They have a clinical depression, and it may have nothing to do with their life circumstances at all. There’s another 5% who commit suicide because they find themselves trapped. For example, jail suicide rates are probably 66 or 70 per 100,000, but it’s still very rare.”
Outside of seeking medical attention, parents, guardians and parents are advised to eliminate the religious stigma that suicide is a sin. Do not ignore a teenager who is clearly expressing suicidal thoughts or acting as though he or she will commit suicide. Ignore stereotypes about how African-Americans are too strong or less likely to commit suicide. Establish relationships with the community to put this person in a positive environment (be it faith-based, work-based or involved in an extracurricular activity).
The numbers for African-American teenagers committing suicide may be low, but one child is one too many.
If you’d like to read more of my interviews with Dr. Carl Bell, visit “Being A Rebel Leads A Chicago Psychiatrist To His Career” and “Is the child bad or is it ADHD?”
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