Childhood sleep issues may raise suicide risk

Question

CNN states that childhood sleep issues may raise suicide risk. The claim in the title matches the content and data within the article page. The author of the Article is Kristen Rogers and she cites experts such as Dr. Rebecca Bernert, a suicidologist and founder of the Stanford Suicide Prevention Research Laboratory in California. She also cites information from Dr. Christopher Willard, a Massachusetts-based psychologist and teaching associate in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. These are valid sources that back up the claims in the article. There are other sites such as NIH and MedicalNewsToday that have posted similar claims. The writing in the article is factual and I don't notice any bias. This was posted on September 19, 2024, which tells readers the information is relevant today and recent.

Comments

While sleep issues can be a contributing factor to mental health struggles, they are rarely the sole cause. The relationship between sleep disorders and suicide risk is complex, often involving a combination of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors. For anyone reading the article, it’s essential to keep in mind that while addressing sleep problems early can be a protective measure, it’s just one aspect of a broader approach to mental health and well-being. Also, while sites like NIH and Medical News Today provide useful information, it’s always valuable to stay critical and seek out multiple sources when considering such significant claims.

Answer 1

The Main Claim of this article is straightforward. The Claim is that Childhood sleep issues have the potential to raise the risk of suicide for said child in the future. The News source is CNN. CNN has been known to be partisan towards Democrats and democratic beliefs. That being said, outside of its partisanship, it is known to be a fairly reliable news sight. The article's writer is Kristen Rogers, a legitimate writer who has written many articles for CNN in the past.

This article is from a couple of months ago, but is still relevantly new. It is still pretty current and up-to-date. There are also many other articles covering the same study as this one, such as this article from WAGM 8. Reading through the article, most of the quotes seem on par with what you would expect to hear, and nothing jumps out as being untrustworthy.

The article doesn't seem to be biased in any way, and the claim(s) that are being made in the article directly connect to the main claim in the title. 

This article, in my opinion, seems to be based on very reliable data from a study written by PhD receivers who know what they are talking about. This article is not on a political topic, and because of this, I think it is very easy to trust this article written by CNN as it has sources to back up the claims it is making and directly lies on what seems to be a reliable study. 

Comments

You did a great job at citing exterior sources and looking beyond one singular source. I think it would be pretty hard to find a biased article on this matter, given it is more of a scientific point opposed to opinion piece.

Answer 2

An article by CNN claims that sleep issues in ones childhood could raise risk for suicide. It’s from a reliable news source yet contains somewhat misleading data.  While there some research done on this topic the data given is not that substantial; “When participants were ages 11 or 12, 91.3% of them hadn’t experienced suicidal thoughts or attempts within the two years since the first data collection.”  When I searched the title of the article I found other reputable sources such as Standard Medicine, (https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/10/childhood-sleep-suicide.html) claiming “Kids with highly disturbed sleep or frequent nightmares at age 9 or 10 were more likely than sound sleepers to have suicidal thoughts and behaviors by age 12, a Stanford Medicine-led study found”.  Along with another article that from National Library of Medicine that claims “Early Childhood Sleep Problems Predict Increased Risk for the Later Development of Suicidal Thoughts”.  This is a well backed claim that in my opinion is somewhat exaggerated in the CNN article.