Poll: 1 in 5 Calif. High Schoolers Say They've Considered Suicide

LOS ANGELES COUNTY -- About one in five California students surveyed by their school districts have thought about killing themselves, according to a new analysis performed by daily newspaper publisher the Southern California News Group.

The analysis is of a study published last year in the Journal of Pediatrics examining data from the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Surveys, which are given to about 70% of students in the state’s 1,026 public school districts.

One of the CalSCHLS surveys, given only to ninth- and 11th-graders as well as students in non-traditional high schools, asks students if they’ve seriously considered killing themselves in the past 12 months.

Avi Astor, a professor of social welfare at UCLA and a co-author of the study, looked at data from individual school sites, rather than the district-level CalSCHLS data available to the general public. According to him, at some schools, 4% of students surveyed reported experiencing suicidal thoughts. At others, the number was nearly 70%, according to a report in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

A Southern California News Group analysis of the CalSCHLS suicide question, meanwhile, averaged district-level data from 2013-14 through the 2016-17 school years. That analysis showed about 18% of the high school students surveyed in California public school districts expressed suicidal thoughts.

California’s rates are in line with national trends, Frank Worrell, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education and an expert in at-risk youth, told the news group.

Astor's full study can be read at https://msw.usc.edu/mswusc-blog/school-environment-suicidal-ideation/