Help me out. I don't see the problem. If there are 100 suicides per 100,000 people in a year amongst a cohort and the next year there are 134 per 100,000, that's an increase in total suicides of 34%. I don't really see why that's not useful as an indicator of how much worse the problem is getting. To me, it would be nice if they were clearer about what that percentage represents, is it the average from 2000-2010 vs the average from 2010-2020?

A bigger issue to me is that small window of the data. It's hard to tell how bumpy this curve is over the long term. Like is a suicide rate amongst teens that fluctuates 34%, decade over decade typical?