Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Aboriginal Youth Suicide

Question

I'm looking for recent data on aboriginal youth suicide rates particularly for Saskatchewan. I can find a lot of material around the topic and some pretty old statistics, but would like to find more information. 

Answer

The Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database collects demographic and cause of death information annually from all provincial and territorial vital statistics registries on all deaths in Canada. I have contacted the Health Statistics Division to confirm if this information would be available as a custom tab.

Articles of interest

Premature mortality in health regions with high Aboriginal populations:
This article examines the rate of potential years of life lost--a measure used to quantify premature mortality in differing health regions. The rate was considerably higher in health regions with large proportions of Aboriginal residents, compared with other health regions. Much of this difference was attributed to injuries in the high-Aboriginal regions; notably, suicides and motor vehicle accidents.
Suicide rates: An overview