Today's publication by National Academies contains an egregiously wrong suicide trends graph misused to undermine the gravity of the recent suicide rise among children and adolescents.
That said, the idea that youth suicide can be cyclical is not all that farfetched though. Strauss and Howe would likely agree that there is a four generation cycle to virtually all social phenomena. See "The Fourth Turning". Additionally, as renowned sociologist (and youth rights activist) Mike Males has noted before, youth suicides had not that long ago (i.e. 1960s and earlier) often been mislabeled as "accidental" deaths to avoid the stigma that was stronger back then. One good way to test this theory is to look at suicide rates in Japan, a country where there is practically no stigma associated with suicide, and never really was (heck, they even have a forest dedicated to it at the foot of Mount Fuji). And they made a lot of progress reducing their historically high suicide rates, that is until the pandemic hit and their progress began to reverse.
That said, the idea that youth suicide can be cyclical is not all that farfetched though. Strauss and Howe would likely agree that there is a four generation cycle to virtually all social phenomena. See "The Fourth Turning". Additionally, as renowned sociologist (and youth rights activist) Mike Males has noted before, youth suicides had not that long ago (i.e. 1960s and earlier) often been mislabeled as "accidental" deaths to avoid the stigma that was stronger back then. One good way to test this theory is to look at suicide rates in Japan, a country where there is practically no stigma associated with suicide, and never really was (heck, they even have a forest dedicated to it at the foot of Mount Fuji). And they made a lot of progress reducing their historically high suicide rates, that is until the pandemic hit and their progress began to reverse.