By Kali Holloway

Researchers have found that between 1993 and 2012, the suicide rate for very young black children, between the ages of 5 and 11, nearly doubled. The increase was driven almost entirely by the suicides of young black boys, who took their own lives in numbers that rose steeply over the nearly two-decade study period. Suicides among young black girls remained essentially level, while the rate of suicide among white children of the same age dropped.

According to researchers, the suicide rate among black boys rose from about 1.8 to nearly 3.5 per one million children. That increase was enough to raise the overall rate of suicide deaths of black children aged 5 to 11 from 1.36 to 2.54 per one million. According to the New York Times, researchers were so stunned by the findings they were concerned about a data error, and delayed the release of their statistics by a year while they double-checked the numbers. The figures held up under scrutiny.

Contrast those findings with the suicides of white children aged 5 to 11, which declined significantly in the study period. Between the years 1993 and 2012, the number of suicides of white children in the aforementiond age cohort fell from 1.14 per million to 0.77. More specifically, the suicide rate among white boys fell from 2 to approximately 1.3 suicides per one million children.

Read More Young Black Boys Committing Suicide at Rates Higher Than Ever | Alternet.