The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data earlier this month that showed teen suicide rates have increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021.
Note that rising homicide rates also follow along behind the suicide rates at steadily increasing rates among youngsters and young adults alike. Are these two trends connected?
It is important to always remember that correlation does not equal causation when viewing statistical data. However, correlation is still a relationship between sets of data. Changes in one set will be associated with other changes at some level.
What are the causes or causes behind the spiraling suicide rates and homicides among young people? According to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, there are multiple environmental factors involved:
We know that mental health is shaped by many factors, from our genes and brain chemistry to our relationships with family and friends, neighborhood conditions, and larger social forces and policies. We also know that, too often, young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth—telling them they are not good-looking enough, popular enough, smart enough, or rich enough. That comes as progress on legitimate, and distressing, issues like climate change, income inequality, racial injustice, the opioid epidemic, and gun violence feels too slow.
Murthy explains further:
Scientists have come up with various hypotheses that explain these trends. Some researchers believe that this trend is partly due to the fact that young people are more open to discussing mental health issues. Others point out the increasing use of digital media and academic pressure. They also mention the limited access to mental healthcare, the health risks associated with alcohol and drugs, as well as broader stressors like the 2008 financial crises, income inequality, racism, and gun violence.
Let’s not forget about the years lost by young people as a result of the social isolation and closed schools that were at the core of the federal response to the pandemic of coronavirus.
What factors are not mentioned by Murthy, or any other national health official who is a prominent figure in the field of public health to explain why suicide and despondency among America’s youth have been on the rise?
The rise in suicide rates coincides with the time when most K-12 public school curriculums have been rewritten in a way that reflects the dogma of the radical left’s critical race theory ideology.
Jonathan Butcher and Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation stated the following in their comprehensive 2020 analysis of the roots and growth of CRT.
The spread of CRT-based curricular content in K-12 education is only second to its presence in postsecondary instruction where it originated. Over the last century, the spread of CRT in college and university syllabi, journal articles, and other educational materials took place over many decades. The effects on K-12 education, however, have only been visible recently.
The material is designed to distract educators and students from learning rigorous content. It also teaches ideas that undermine individual liberty, America’s founding principles, and the idea of systemic racism.
CRT’s fundamental argument is that American society is divided into two distinct groups: white oppressors, and people of color who are oppressed. The American political, cultural, economic, and social institutions are all designed to enforce racist oppressors’ will on the oppressed.
This reality will not change unless America is transformed into a totalitarian Leftist hellhole similar to those in China, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere.
Since the early 1990s, American public school students are taught that racist whites cannot change and will never be able to do so, whereas oppressed blacks will remain trapped in racist systems until there is a revolutionary movement.
Combine this putrescent CRT viewpoint with Greta Thunberg’s shriek, which is constantly repeated, and the climate change dire cry that we will all die very soon if don’t return to Stone Age agricultural and energy systems.
We should also remember the growing number of “Nones”, young people who claim no religious affiliation. (Although, thankfully, there are signs that this trend is slowing down).
What is surprising about the fact is that many young people believe they will never have a future because they can’t escape the system of white privilege, and even if somehow they managed to do this, it wouldn’t matter, because climate change would get them and they won’t have any hope for an afterlife.
What should surprise us most is the fact that so many of them are still going strong.
