Roughly one-quarter young adults in foster care in California have attempted suicide and their rate of suicidal behavior is nearly three times that of peers who aren’t in government care, according to a recently published study and policy brief.
Colleen Katz, an associate professor of social work at Hunter College and an author of the study, called the findings “shocking.” While there are many anecdotal accounts of young people taking their own lives while in foster care, she said little information exists about the prevalence of suicide or which young people are most at risk.
“These numbers just jumped off the page,” Katz said of the study released last month. The findings were also included in a policy brief released by the UC Berkeley-based Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub. “This is something that we urgently need to understand better.’’
About a quarter of young adults in foster care in California have attempted suicide and their rate of suicidal behavior is nearly three times that of peers who aren’t in government care, researchers found.
The study validates the well-documented understanding that foster youth are at a greater risk of suicidal behavior. But there has been limited research about the characteristics of those youth.
The data used for Katz’s study comes from the landmark California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study, also known as CalYOUTH. The decade-long longitudinal CalYOUTH study asked hundreds of California youth a battery of questions about all facets of their life, including two pertinent queries: “Have you ever felt so low that you thought about committing suicide?” and “Have you ever attempted suicide?”
Katz and her colleagues contrasted the answers from this survey with federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration data, and found that foster youth had markedly higher experiences with suicide than young people in the general population. For example, roughly 24% of foster youth in the survey had attempted suicide compared with about 2% of young adults in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 25.
In addition, 40% of young people in foster care had considered suicide, compared with 11% of young adults in the general population.
Researchers found that certain foster youth are at a greater risk for pursuing suicide. Young people identifying as LGBTQ+ were two to four times more likely to consider and attempt suicide than other foster youth. Mental health issues and substance use were also key predictors of suicidal behavior among foster youth, particularly young people who struggle with both. And young adults who experienced neglect while in foster care were far more likely to report suicidal behavior.
Katz said she hoped that a better understanding of which foster youth were most likely to experience suicidal behavior would prompt more child welfare systems to take action. Most CPS agencies have limited resources and can’t provide psychotherapy or thorough assessments for every foster child, she said. But they could ask a handful of screening questions that require only a few minutes. A 2024 JAMA study found that simple screening tools have been shown to predict suicidal behaviors.
“My hope is that over time, fewer kids will die because these child welfare agencies are going to do a better job of identifying who needs help,” Katz said.
Declining mental health for young people nationwide
A 2024 report on youth health by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that “nearly all indicators of poor mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors’’ have worsened over the past decade, including the percentage of young people who seriously considered suicide or made an actual plan to take their own life. One in three young adults aged 18 to 25 nationwide have experienced a mental, behavioral, or emotional health issue in the past year, a share that is higher than other adults.
In California, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 24, mirroring a similar national trend. There have been some positive signs recently — a slight decline in suicide over the past two years. But the suicide rates for Black and Latino youth have held steady or increased, according to the California Department of Public Health.
In 2023, the department launched a youth suicide prevention media and outreach campaign and awarded $16 million to several nonprofits working with those disproportionately impacted by suicide, including Native, Latino, Black and LGBTQ youth, as well as young people in foster care.
Researchers and advocates say young adults transitioning out of foster care are particularly vulnerable to suicide. Many experience significant trauma before and after entering government custody. They also have the added stress of securing housing and adapting to life on their own after leaving foster care. And often, many are isolated and lack supportive relationships because they may have been living in foster care placements that are far from family, friends and their community.
Leigh-Anna Faith, 25, entered foster care at age 17 in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to New York City to attend The New School. Faith said she faced a devastating mental health crisis in 2019 that was triggered by sudden homelessness and the strain of working three jobs while pursuing a 19-credit load during her junior year. Her downward spiral included anxiety, suicidal thoughts and hospitalization, she said.
Faith returned to California where she faced a weeks-long wait for a psychiatrist. Eventually, with the help of her mother who had lost custody of her, Faith stabilized herself.
Faith is now a part-time law student and full-time paralegal at a housing nonprofit. She said some child welfare systems prioritize the tangible needs of foster youth, such as housing and gift cards for groceries, at the expense of other needs.
“Because we’re so focused on keeping the youth physically stable, mental health becomes kind of an afterthought,” she said.
Faith added that a fear of being hospitalized or placed in restrictive residential treatment facilities prevents many foster youth from divulging their mental health issues to social workers. Access to peers with similar experiences can be “a life-saving factor” for youth with suicidal behavior, she said.
“There needs to be more funding for comprehensive mental health care, but we can do more to prevent youth from getting to a serious point by having peer advocates within agencies, listening to youth who are struggling to understand their traumatic experiences,” she said.
Stacey Ault, executive director of the Race and Gender Equity Project, agrees. Her organization trains young people as peer “wellness coaches,” who are trained to recognize signs of possible self-harm and learn how to work with someone in crisis and connect them to the right help.
And, noting the shortage of Black mental health professionals nationwide, the Sacramento-based nonprofit also tries to provide culturally sensitive care by offering a Black therapist for a few hours a week to youth, including those from foster care.
But Ault added that along with traditional therapy, offering other forms of wellness support can also be helpful to young people, particularly those in foster care.
“Not all healing looks like a one-on-one session with a therapist,” Ault said. “We’re hearing from young people that just spending time with their peers, doing cultural projects or painting or dancing is the prevention and healing that they need.”
