Disparities in suicide risk trajectories among youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT: The pandemic contributed to an ongoing youth mental health crisis, though mental health burdens are disproportionately distributed within youth populations. The objective of this study was to identify latent trajectories of youth suicide risk during the COVID-19 pandemic and examine differential risk by demographic subgroups. We leverage a national crisis dataset (n = 6741 youth in crisis) and employ latent Markov models and multinomial logistic regression to identify suicide risk classes and model within-person suicide risk trajectories from pre-pandemic to the extended pandemic response period (2019-2022) among a cohort of young people (ages 24 and younger). This analysis identified three suicide risk classes: low risk (sample ranges from 4831 to 5199 texters across periods), high risk (

SUBMITTER: Ryan SC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12835459 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature