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This is the claim made in an article made by BBC in March 2017.
The article then goes into stating that ‘’But while men are still much more likely to kill themselves in Canada, young women are starting to catch up. Over the past decade, the suicide rate amongst girls has increased by 38%, while male suicide decreased by 34%.
The growth has helped level out the gender-gap, with women accounting for 42% of all suicide deaths under 20 in 2013. In 2003, they accounted for just over a quarter.’’
The first major statement made claims that in the past decade the suicide rate amongst young women has increased over 38% while male suicide decreased by 34%, to analyse this data I looked at the original source which BBC used to make this claim. I found Statistic Canada first, the website which BBC got their figures from in order to check whether teen suicide is on the rise amongst Canadian girls.
The data I have found from the previous five years indeed shows a rise in the number of teenage girls committing suicide if we look at the figures from 2009, 12 girls aged 10 to 14 have committed suicide and 57 teenage girls age 15to 19 whereas the figures rose in 2013, 20 girl age 10 to 14 have committed suicide whereas 66 girls age 15 to 19 have also committed suicide.
This shows an increase in the amount of young women committing suicide, in the space of 4 years the figures for the first group of girls rose from 1.33% of the total amount of suicides committed by women/girls in 2009 to 1.97% of the total amount of suicides committed by women/girls in 2013. Furthermore, the second group of girls also showed an increase from 6.33% of the total amount of suicides committed by women/girls in 2009 to 6.52% of the total amount of suicides committed by women/girls in 2013. Although, some may argue that the increase is not drastic it still shows that the headline is correct, as the amount of suicides committed by teenage girls in Canada is on a rise.
Moreover, the newspaper report also presents a graph:
This graph clearly shows that the amount of suicides committed by females ages 0-19 was on a clear rise which still continues, and although it reached its highest peak in 2005, it has been growing pretty steadily for the past couple of years. In this case it was very important to look at the source from which BBC news gathered their statistics, which is ‘Statistics Canada’. Statistics Canada was invented in 1971 and it is the Government of Canada government agency commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada. Further research stated that ‘’ The bureau is commonly called StatCan or StatsCan. StatCan is the official abbreviation. It has regularly been considered the best statistical organization in the world by The Economist, such as in the 1991 and 1993 “Good Statistics” surveys. Public Policy Forum and others have also ranked it first.’’[1] In this case it is fair to say that the data which BBC has used is fairly correct. Although, Statistics Canada bases their statistics on surveys completed by the residents of Canada, and surveys are often highly unreliable as people often do not want to speak out about uncomfortable matters such as suicide and therefore, they may not provide true answers. However, taking it all into consideration it is still fairly accurate and therefore, the headline used by the BBC news is not misleading.
Article used: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39210463