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Palo Alto, California is home to high-tech companies, Stanford University, and upscale living, but the success-oriented culture has a dark side. Recent "suicide clusters" of teens and young adults are stirring the community and federal agents into action.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a
"suicide cluster" as three or more suicides that occur closer in time and space than what would be considered normal for the community.
That is what happened in Palo Alto during 2009 and 2010, when five students or recent graduates from Henry M. Gunn High School took their own lives, and it is what happened again across 2014 and 2015 when four more students, three from Gunn and one from Palo Alto High School, did the same, according to the Palo Alto Unified School District and other local reports.
This week, at the invitation of the city council, the CDC will begin investigating what it calls the
"suicide contagion," what is behind the tragedies, through one of its epidemiological assistance teams.
Since 2011, the federal agency has conducted similar suicide cluster inquiries in Fairfax County, Virginia and two Denver counties.The CDC lists suicide as the second most common cause of death for Americans 15-24 years of age.
Comment: Why are so many killed by police in the US? Obviously there's something terribly wrong with the way police are trained.