By Elizabeth Hlavinka, MedPage Today, October 28, 2019

Suicides among children were more concentrated in high-poverty areas, a researcher said here.

Of 20,982 suicides to occur from 2007 to 2016, poverty-stricken counties had significantly higher suicide rates than counties with lower levels of poverty, and the rate increased along with poverty concentration, such that children in areas with the highest poverty levels (≥20%) were more than one-third more likely to die by suicide than kids in the lowest poverty concentration (adjusted incidence rate ratio 1.60, 95% CI 1.34-1.91), reported Jennifer Hoffmann, MD, of Northwestern University in Chicago.

The trend was particularly pronounced for suicide by firearms, with children living in areas with the highest poverty concentrations dying by this method at more than twice the rate as children in low-poverty areas (aIRR 2.44, 95% CI 1.84-3.23), she said at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting.

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