Mental Health
White supremacist murders of Black persons and Black youth suicides in the US, 2010-2019: A Time Series Analysis. Parvati Singh* Parvati Singh Marquianna Griffin Rania Badran Nisha Saranat Amy Fairchild Kamesha Spates
Over the past two decades, the incidence of suicide among Black youth under the age of 25 in the United States has increased substantially. Scholars attribute this alarming trend to racism and discrimination, in conjunction with greater psychiatric vulnerability of Black youth to racist events. White supremacist incidents of violence resulting in murder arguably form one of the most extreme and visible forms of racism. These events may manifest like a contagion, rippling across communities, and correspond with rapid proliferation of racial discrimination, aggression and violence targeted towards minority groups that, in turn, may increase risk factors for suicide and suicide mortality among Black youth. We examined temporal association between monthly trends in white supremacist murders of Black individuals and suicide mortality among Black youth aged 5-24 from 2010 to 2019. We retrieved national monthly counts of white supremacist murders of Black persons (exposure) from the Anti-Defamation League hate and extremism incidents database, from 2010 to 2019. For our outcome, we retrieved monthly counts of suicides among black and white youth (age 5-24 years), by sex (male, female) suicides from the CDC’s Restricted Use National Vital Statistics Mortality database from 2010 to 2019. We used Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time-series methods to examine the proximate relation between our exposure (0-3 month lags) and outcome. Results from time-series analysis show an increase in Black male youth suicides two months following an increase in White supremacist murders of Black persons (coeff= 3.9, p < 0.01; fail to reject the null among Black female youth). These findings suggest approximately 72 additional suicides among Black male youth statistically attributable to white supremacist murders of Black person over our study period. Our findings underscore the potential impact of white supremacist events on the disturbing rise in Black youth suicides.