There is a possible alternative explanation for the rise in suicides, however: the greater availability of inexpensive guns in the early 1990s. In fact, the increase in suicide deaths among teens was entirely due to suicides involving guns; non-firearm suicides actually went down in the early 1990s. Most suicide attempts without guns don’t lead to death, but those involving guns do. So the rise in suicides for Gen X teens might have had more to do with the preponderance of cheap guns than with mental health. Still, the Gen X teen years were not easy ones, especially in the early 1990s. In the
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