OPINION: Reckoning with the suicide crisis affecting Alaska children

Awareness of the mental health crises facing American youth has greatly increased in the past few years, thanks in part to the spotlight shone by the COVID-19 pandemic. But youth suicide was on the rise long before the pandemic began. Suicide is the second leading cause of death of children ages 12-17 both nationwide and in Alaska, second to all kinds of accidents combined. Sadly, Alaska has led the nation in youth suicide rates for more than a decade. As with many illnesses, the Alaska Native community is disproportionately affected, with a youth suicide rate more than double that of other races.

As a medical student, I spent six weeks this past winter working at the only children’s psychiatric hospital in Montana. Montana, like Alaska, has a large Indigenous population, scarce mental health resources and one of the nation’s highest youth suicide rates. The hospital was always full of children who needed hospitalization to prevent suicide, with a long waiting list for admission. Against this dark set of facts, the psychiatrists I worked with impressed on me that many suicides can be prevented with earlier diagnosis and treatment of depression.

The truth of this message is demonstrated by the story of the White Mountain Apache tribe. In the 1990s, the tribe experienced a terrible epidemic of suicide among their youth. In response, they implemented a targeted strategy to reduce youth suicide. They educated community members to look for signs of suicidal behavior, deployed elders to teach a resilience curriculum in schools, partnered with local emergency departments to screen youth for suicide risk, and recruited case managers to help patients and their families navigate treatment for depression. In five years, the tribe’s rate of youth suicide attempts was almost halved.

The rate of suicide among Alaska children — and in particular Alaska Native children — is an unacceptable tragedy. Suicide is preventable, and depression, a key risk factor for suicide, is a treatable and often curable illness. Half of the Alaskan children who committed suicide between 2016 and 2019 had a known history of suicidal thoughts and nearly 40% were known to have depression, but only 19% were receiving treatment for mental illness.

Let’s try to emulate the success of the White Mountain Apache in our Alaskan community by increasing awareness of the signs of suicidal behavior, initiating universal screening for depression in schools, and developing pathways to connect vulnerable students with resources and treatment. With urgent collective awareness and action, we can stop the loss of Alaska’s children to suicide.

Madelyn Boslough is an Alaskan and a fourth-year medical student in the WWAMI program at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She previously attended West High in Anchorage and Stanford University.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.