The most likely scenario is that suicidality is simply too complex a phenomenon to neatly align with any one particular policy or explanation, especially during a once-in-a-century disruption to life as we knew it. While many people will see the graphs above as evidence that, in actuality, school closures reduced suicidality among teens and that opening schools after the deadliest winter in modern American history increased teen suicidality, the truth could be far more mundane than that: that pandemic-related school closures and suicidal behaviors among adolescents have no direct cause-and-effect relationship. To be clear, these graphs do not prove that opening schools made more adolescent girls more suicidal—though that would be an understandable interpretation, given the breathtaking trends they illustrate. But they certainly do show, and rather impressively, that closing schools did not by any means increase suicidal behavior one bit.

In writing this, I have found the surprising reverse correlation between suicidal behavior and time spent in school—both prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and during it—gnawing at me. Could it be that the pressures around school itself are among the most important stressors related to suicidality among teens? If that’s so, the underlying reasons could be related either to academic or social pressures. Regardless, no one would argue that we should do away with in-person learning just because more time spent in the classroom appears to be associated with increased rates of attempted or completed suicide. But it is an upsetting insight, nonetheless. The problem of adolescent suicide demands a comprehensive approach. Suicide deaths among adolescents rose around 50% over the last decade, from around 60 deaths per one million teens annually to around 90 suicide deaths per one million teens annually. The Covid-19 pandemic did not create this problem, but it might yet teach us something about it.