Pattern of Adolescent Suicides in Pakistan: A content analysis of Newspaper reports of two years

Suicide is a serious, yet preventable global mental health problem for people of all ages and countries. It is the third leading cause of death in 15-19-year-olds. There is paucity of systematic studies and official statistics on child & adolescent suicides in Pakistan. In the absence of other means, newspaper coverage of adolescent suicides may serve as a useful source to understand the phenomena. Our objective was to report pattern of suicide deaths in children and adolescents across Pakistan and to determine the predominant methods of suicide precipitating events and associated factors. This study used content analysis to analyze newspaper reports of adolescent suicide in four leading newspapers of Pakistan from January 1 , 2019, through December 31 , 2020. Search yielded 289 child and adolescent (ages