In Russia, the number of suicides of children has sharply increased

Over the past three years, the number of suicide attempts among minors has increased by 13%, and the number of repeated cases has doubled. These figures are in the report. commissioner for children’s rights for 2021writes RBC.

The document provides information from the Investigative Committee and Rosstat. According to the UK, last year the number of child suicides across the country increased by 37.4% – up to 753 cases. In the pandemic 2020, there were much fewer of them – 548. The figures for 2019 and 2018 are similar to the data for 2021: 737 and 788 deaths, respectively.

Rosstat statistics are noticeably lower than those of investigators. According to the service, 311 children committed suicide in 2020, and 372 in 2019. Rosstat did not publish data for last year.

Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova noted that such disparate figures do not allow specifying the extent of the problem. At the same time, she noted that the information from the Investigative Committee is more complete due to not only records in death certificates, but also the facts of suicides established during the investigation of criminal cases.

Child suicides in Russia are associated with problems in communicating with relatives, unhappy love, dissatisfaction with their appearance, learning difficulties, mental disorders of the child, “the influence of illegal information” on the Internet, the report says.

Lvova-Belova urged to improve the state policy on the prevention of child suicides, in particular, to make psychological assistance available to minors. Now, there are twice as many students per teacher-psychologist in the school than it should be according to the standard: 607 children instead of 300.