Suicide and mental health problems among Swedish youth in the wake of the 1990s recession

The purpose of this explorative study is to bring together a variety of Swe dish data sources with indicators of youth mental health and living conditi ons in order to illuminate trends during the last decades, elucidate possib le determinants of mental ill health and develop hypotheses to explain the observed trend patterns. The analyses in the study reveal some surprising i nconsistencies with respect to the mental health trends among young people during the 1990s, Most striking is the pattern of increasing youth unemploy ment coinciding with almost inverse trends in the rates of suicide. The sec ular trends in fatal suicides during this period do not show any increase b ut some actual decrease in subpopulations despite high sustained levels of unemployment. In contrast, survey data indicate that the general mental hea lth of youth during this period appears to have deteriorated.