WITHDRAWN Durkheim's Social Integration Theory in Black Youth Suicide. A Machine Learning & Neighborhood Study

Music City Center 

Among all racial groups in the US, the suicide rate among Black youth has increased the fastest in the past two decades, rising from 3.05 per 100,000 in 2001 to 5.99 per 100,000 in 2020. This alarming trend underscores the urgent need to study and prevent Black youth suicide as a top public health priority. Durkheim's Social Integration Theory posits that individuals are vulnerable to suicide when social integration is either extremely low or excessively high. The theory has been evaluated across various populations using separate measures of marital stability, residential stability, and religiosity in analytical models. However, to our knowledge, it has not yet been examined in the Black youth population. To address this gap, we propose a data-driven approach to develop a composite measure that captures a neighborhood's level of social integration. We then apply this measure to evaluate Durkheim's theory among Black children and youth (ages 10-17.9) with a mental health-related diagnosis between 10/1/2016 and 9/30/2022 in the INSIGHT Clinical Research Network (n=116,757), controlling for suicide attempt risk and protective factors identified through machine learning models.

social integration

Black youth

suicide attempts

electronic health records

machine learning

neighborhood effects 

Mental Health Statistics Section