13th June, 2008

Transport accidents and suicide are the two leading causes of injury death among young Australians, according to statistics released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

The report shows that transport accidents accounted for 44 per cent of injury deaths in the 12 to 24 year age group while suicides accounted for 32 per cent of injury deaths within the same age group.

Deanna Eldridge from the AIHW’s Children, Youth and Families Unit, says injury remains the major cause of death among young people, despite a halving of injury death rates over the past 20 years to 2005.

Ms Eldridge says the decline was almost “entirely due” to a 70 per cent drop in transport accident deaths among young people.

She adds that while there has also been a modest fall in suicides over the 20 years to 2005, hospitalisation rates for intentional self-harm among young people increased by 43 per cent between 1996 and 2006.

While hospitalisation rates for intentional self-harm for women are more than twice that for men, the suicide rate among young men is almost four times that of women.

~ www.aihw.gov.au

- DAVID ADAMS