The most common cause of death among young people under the age of 19 in the United States is firearms. What takes the most lives among young people in Norway?
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The main answer to that is: Very little.
– It has been a fantastic development. The death toll is at a very low level historically and internationally, says researcher Guttorm Raknes in NIPH.
Although few young people die in Norway, 258 between the ages of 0 and 19 died last year. Raknes emphasizes that every death is of course a tragedy for those affected, but statistically it can hardly be safer to grow up than it is in Norway now.
– A zero vision of deaths from 0 to 19 years is probably not realistic, he says.
–In 2020, 39 young people died in accidents. In 2021, the number is 37.
– Accidents are typically traffic accidents, falls, drowning, fire, poisoning and that kind of thing, Raknes explains.
The statistics list external causes of death with several subgroups. One of them is suicide and willful self-harm. Of the 258 between the ages of 0 and 19 who died last year, there were two causes: Illness or suicide.
– The very youngest are very overrepresented. This is probably due to a mixture of complications in connection with childbirth, congenital malformations and serious illness that are difficult to deal with, says Raknes.
The new figures from the cause of death register show that 107 of the 258 under 19s who died last year were under one year.
Figures from Statistics Norway show that mortality among zero-year-olds has fallen by 87 per cent since 1966.
–For those between the ages of 15 and 19, suicide is the most common cause of death, according to an article in the pediatric journal PAIDOS.
In the same article, Chief Physician Sveinung Larsen at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim questions the impression that there is an increase in mental disorders among young people.
Of all those under the age of 19 who died in 2021, 39 were suicides. It is slightly higher than in 2020, but the number has been fairly even over the last five years.
It was much more dangerous to be young in Norway before than it is today.
– Mortality among children and young people has fallen extremely much in the last ten years, says Raknes.
In 1951, 2412 people between the ages of 0 and 19 died in Norway.
–He also points out that when most young people in the United States die from firearms, it is not just because the number of people being shot increases.
– It is also because what was previously the most common cause of death, namely traffic accidents, has decreased dramatically. Thus, the two reasons have swapped places as number one and two.
But gunshot wounds as the most common cause of death for children and young people are still experienced dramatically, even for those who try to save them. In the American podcast Pediatric Emergency Playbook, pediatrician Tim Horeczko talks about how bullets do much greater damage to children than adults, and that mortality is thus higher.
–Chief physician and writer Sveinung Larsen points out that the reality Horeczko describes from the emergency department where children who have been shot come in is quite different from the one we have in Norway.
– I work in the emergency room for children. The idea that we should prepare and train for gunshot wounds in children is fortunately terribly foreign.
There are both killings and deaths of firearms in Norway as well, but it is rare.
With the exception of 2011, when the tragedy on Utøya happened, the numbers have decreased noticeably since 2009.
– It is difficult to say why, but we got a new weapons law in 2009, which made it mandatory to store weapons in lockable weapons cabinets. It may have played a role, Raknes suggests.
The number of young people who use firearms in suicide has also decreased. If US figures for the cause of death in the form of young people were to be transferred to Norway, it means that between 60 and 70 young people would die from gunshot wounds in Norway every year.
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