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Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova
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Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner has announced a sharp increase in suicides amongst minors. Is this really the case?

Source: Meduza
Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova
Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova
Photo: Александр Щербак / ТАСС / Scanpix / LETA

On Monday, March 20, Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova announced a 57 percent on the year increase in child suicides in 2016. “One of the main reasons for this situation is the avalanche-like spread of “death groups,” Kuznetsova said. (Meduza’s note: “Death groups” are online communities inciting people to commit suicide.) On February 13, deputy Duma Speaker Irina Yarovaya also spoke of a sharp increase in suicides amongst children, which she estimated at 720 suicides in 2016, citing information from Russia’s Investigative Committee. At the same time, however, UNICEF claims that the number of suicides amongst people aged 15-19 in Russia has been steadily falling since the mid-1990s. Meduza spoke with Evgeny Andreev, the head of the International Laboratory for Population and Health Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics to better understand Kuznetsova’s and Yarovaya’s statements.

Evgeny Andreev

Head of the International Laboratory for Population and Health Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics

I do not know the source of the information provided by Yarovoya and the esteemed Children’s Rights Commissioner, as state statistics on suicides do not come out before May. Perhaps they used preliminary data, but, as a rule, such data does not specify the age of [whose who have committed suicide].

It is not the first time that there is panic in light of information about an increase in childhood suicides. There was a similar situation two or three years ago, but I do not remember it ever being confirmed by statistics. If you look, it turns out that the suicide rate is actually decreasing.

For example, in the 10-14-year age group, there were 189 cases of suicides in 2010, 163 cases in 2011, 166 cases in 2012, 152 cases in 2013, 136 cases in 2014, and 129 cases in 2015. (These figures exclude Crimea).

In the 15-19-year age group, there were 1381 cases of suicide in 2010, 1285 cases in 2011, 1073 cases in 2012, 876 cases in 2013, 786 cases in 2014, and 678 cases in 2015. (These figures also exclude Crimea).

The number of children is constantly changing, so you need to translate the data so as to see it as number of suicides per 100,000 people in each age group. Then it turns out that suicides in the 10-14-year age group, have steadily fallen from 2.9 cases in 2010 to 1.8 cases in 2015, and from 16.2 cases to 10.2 cases in the 15-19-year age group in the same time period.

There is another tricky group to consider: that of so-called “deaths from injuries from unestablished intentions.” These are cases that are not fully investigated. Such people who have either been killed, or committed suicide, or died in an accidental event. In 2015, such cases amounted to 230 deaths in the 10-14-year age group and 734 deaths in the 15-19-year age group. It is possible that Yarovaya was citing these particular figures. It is difficult to draw conclusions about how many of these deaths were suicides, due [largely] to the fact that these cases are investigated by several different structures, first by investigators, then by medical experts. No one is interested in getting to the bottom of this: the investigator is not obliged to inform the doctor about the nature of the injuries on the body; at the same time, the medical examiner is obligated to report the injuries precisely as they were presented to him by the investigator. If the investigator says “I do not know,” the doctor will write the same thing.

For comparison, in English-speaking countries, all the work is done by coroners who function as both the investigator and the doctor. In [the Russian] system, however, there is no interaction [between the two]: one is subordinate to the Ministry of Health [and] the other to his superiors in the Investigation Committee. As a result, [it is easy to have] misunderstandings that [result in] speculation.

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