* Suicidology Quiz: The Answer *

Two days ago, I posted a quiz:

Q: If I presented this graph to claim that "the pandemic, and high school closure reduced suicides in Canadian students," what is the LARGEST error I'd be making?

/1
Here were the responses and the distribution. I'm going to go by "least right" answers first, and hopefully you can learn about statistical interpretation and youth suicidology at the same time.

Caution: math involved

/2
❌C: "The change was within fluctuation seen year to year" - True, but more an error in interpretation...

Each fluctuation could or could not be due to any number of factors, and combining sexes, this WAS the 2nd-3rd largest drop.

/3
❌A: "the change between 19-20 overlaps error bars" - again, totally true

BUT... this is whole population, so error bars are more there to "warn you" what the likely year-to-year variance is. It's measuring all population, so to say it's decreased is accurate.

/4
❌B: "the largest drop was seen in 2006, not now, and there's no school closures/pandemic then." Yup, that's another error that was made in the statement.
But of course, two things could be true (something in 2006 and pandemic/high school closures now).

/5
✅✅So the right answer: C! ✅✅
"15-19 includes people who have left high school"

Why is this the largest error? because suicide rates increase by each year, in a "normal growth" (exponential increase then decrease in rate change as kids get older)

/6
On top of this, the "percent in some form of high school" by each age (estimates based on a number of resources, from a publication I'm working on pending press):

15 - ~99%
16 - ~98%
17 - ~87%
18 - ~28%
19 - ~4%

/7
So in this graph measuring Canadian suicides 15-19, anywhere between 50-60% of the kids represented are in kids who are NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL to begin with. We get potential confounders in both the suicides AND population.

/8
There are a # of errors also present in statement:
* yearly #, yet pandemic in march
* closure measures variable throughout year
* each prov has different demography
* correlation isn't causation!!!!!!
* continued previous trend from 2018?
* @ryanjblack noted I forgot a comma
/9
* Many other confounders occurred in 2020 including unemployment in families, MORE non-suicide deaths in families in Canada, significant economic stimulus, protests due to police violence, ongoing minoritized inequities.

/10
This is why whenever I post graphs like this, I do NOT claim the opposite of what non-expert people say.

/11
The original #urgencyofnormal authors cited data from <19 years, making all the errors above. This is before you include their mis-citation of CDC, and before you include reprehensible nature of the "suicides argument".

I'm glad they removed it after my criticisms.

/12
Also note my question was "pandemic + high school closures," as I've detailed in my thread last week, they made the serious error of assuming a separation between pandemic/school closures anyway! No way national data can do that.

/13
There is expert knowledge in suicidology, & even more expert knowledge in child and adolescent suicidology. If speaking about pediatric suicide, you need:
* child & youth mental health experts
* statistical experts
* accurate data
* proper cited evidence
& * suicidologists

/fin
and to be clear, the 50-60% is the proportion IN school, my double negatives confused me. Here's the average for 1999-2020:

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More from @tylerblack32

Feb 1
RE: #UrgencyOfNormal (sorry for drama, have to get this off my brain & move on)

@DrScottBalsitis and I had an excellent chat, & I meant every word I said in my tweet about him. I'm glad he edited some slides, but it's still woefully one-sided. The grade went from F to INC

/1 Image
Genuinely, I liked him and we got along. This fellow is, like me, ultimately a geek about science. You'll note I occasionally tweet, advocate, and even make fancy slides/graphs about areas outside of my expertise too!

I've sent him good data and trust he will process.

/2 Image
But there is a turn, and my issue is less with him. And trust me, it may sound this way but this isn't an insult to his abilities.

He's not uni-affiliated or an appointed academic.

I hold the academics to a different standard. I don't care to mention their names anymore.
/3
Read 32 tweets
Feb 1
So close.

Say it Urgency of Normal people: "2400 suicides in youth was wrong, the number was much lower and not increased."

All of you can just retweet me too, I'm doing the work for you. All who hyped the OG errors document.
"we also incorrectly stated that youth were the only group to have an increase when in fact they did not increase and another age group did."

"Final mortality shows that there was no significant change in youth suicide statistics between 2019 to 2020."
But now, for whatever reason, suicides are so unimportant to you. When "suicides increased" they were a main point on your summary slides as well as in your mental health slides.

Now that we know that suicides did not increase, they have simply disappeared as important.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 31
Many days into my corrections, the authors of #urgencytonormal have not yet actually retracted anything:

I can hammer it out in 60 seconds.

Ready, set, go:

/1
RETRACTION:

We incorrectly reported the # of suicides, and stated they had increased from 2019, and stated that children were the only group to show an increase. This is inaccurate. According to CDC Wonder, the final mortality statistics for 2020 show that suicides in children..
did not increase, and in fact, our original citation did not reflect what was in the document, as we incorrectly stated the children were the only group that raised, the citation is clear that "only the 5% increase for those aged 25-34".
Read 5 tweets
Jan 31
Challenge #1 to test to see if #urgencyofnormal cares about reporting data accurately.

The woefully biased MH slides of the doc cites Racine, yet Robinson studies same period, includes kids, comes to a different conclusion. Highlights limitations.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

/1
"There was a high degree of unexplained heterogeneity observed (I2s > 90%), indicating that change in mental health was highly variable across samples."

Responsible people reporting the data would include BOTH metaanalyses, not select one.
More challenges coming soon. Have sent this plus 2 others to authors directly.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 30
Someone sent this to me earnestly, but, honestly, if it weren't convincing parents to not vaccinate their kids :(

To someone with a medical background and actually...you know... Relevant statistical and educational experience... All of these comments laughable.

Sigh.
My spit take moment
Vaccinating children who got control (100% of enrolled parents wanted their children to get vaccinated! It was a voluntary study!) is supremely ethical. Vaccines save lives even covid vaccines and youngest lives. This awful beast turns the **best decision of the RCT** into evil.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 30
Imagine me, a suicidologist, tweeting this message from the incredible Jessi Gold. I have been accused personally and directly of "only caring about suicide," but this is a perfect message.

My comment: we also need to de-psychiatricize suicide and make it a societal problem
I am both a suicidologist AND a child and youth mental health advocate. Sometimes the venn diagram of what i'm doing is circular, other times disconnected. Mental health conflation with suicide is SOCIETIES prolem and I want to DECREASE that.
When people talk about "mental health" and then put up a suicide graph, it makes me wanna puke. Suicide is multiply-complex, and only 50% of people who die by suicide have any diagnosable mental illness (sorry advocates, yer wrong)
Read 8 tweets

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