Good article and the author's effort to get the data is commendable (although it would be interesting to look at Japan, China, India, Brazil, etc.). As far as

Good article and the author's effort to get the data is commendable (although it would be interesting to look at Japan, China, India, Brazil, etc.). As far as the causes for the trends, that's anyone's guess (such as social media). It's not hard to find correlations with all kinds of events, e.g. the 2008 economic collapse had many knock-on effects and mental health doesn't benefit from families losing homes, jobs, stable community relationships, etc. This has even been studied: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844458/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844458/ > "All studies showed that the economic crisis was an important stressor that had a negative impact on workers’ mental health. Most of the studies documented that a rise in unemployment, increased workload, staff reduction, and wages reduction were linked to an increased rate of mood disorders, anxiety, depression, dysthymia, and suicide." Is that the reason for the increase in suicide attempts and rates among adolescents since 2010? Who knows - but clearly, rising suicide rates are a sign of societal malaise, indeed this was leveraged as a criticism of communist East Germany, which reportedly had an overall suicide rate twice that of the USA today.