Overdose on pills?
Overdose on pills?Flash 90

Suicides among girls between the ages of 15 and 19 reached an unprecedented high in 2015, the US National Center for Health Statistics reported.

524 teenage girls aged 15-19 took their own lives in 2015, compared to the 1975 high of 305. And since 2007, suicide rates have doubled.

Meanwhile, the rates of teen suicide for boys of the same age was lower than the peak rates of the 1980s to 1990s. However, 1,537 suicides in 2015 still tops 2007's rate.

"These data show that between 2007 and 2015, there's substantial increases in suicide rates for both young males and young females," study author and CDC Violence Protection Division Associate Director of Science Tom Simon said.

"For young males, there was a 31% increase in suicide rates, and for young females, the suicide rate doubled.

"We know that overall in the US, we're seeing increases in suicide rates across all age groups.

"We're not seeing the same kind of increases among the oldest adults, but we are seeing substantial and sustained increases now for the other age groups really going back to 2000."

However, Ohio State University adjunct professor Carl Tishler remained unfazed by the statistics.

"2015 may be an unusual year. Without access to emergency department data or coroner data, I cannot say what caused this blip," he said, explaining that it "could be the result of a lot of things."

"Some of the opiate or heroin overdoses in adolescents may be interpreted by emergency departments as suicides. There may be more Internet suicides.

"If you look at suicide attempts by girls, it’s typically that girls attempt suicide about four to one or three to one over boys, yet boys complete suicide in the reverse. That tends, we think, to have to do with the modality of suicide attempt."

Tishler pointed out that studies from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show males commit suicide four times as often as females. Females, he said, usually overdose on pills, while males usually use firearms or hang themselves.

He also noted that sudden changes in psychotropic medications are often "done in such a manner that makes people more vulnerable to attempting suicide" and warned that physicians "need to be careful" when starting or stopping these medications.