A new study has suggested that youth in rural US communities are more likely to commit suicide as compared to those in urban areas. The study has also found that the gap is mounting.

According to researchers, it was found that presently suicide is double as frequent in young rural American people as compared to those in urban areas. It has been assumed by authorities that reasons behind this could be lack of mental health services, better access to guns, isolation and poor economic conditions as compared those who survive in urban areas.

The third leading reason of death among people between 10 and 24 years of age is suicide. Between 1996 and 2010, about 66,595 people in that age died. Every year, about 20 young males per 100,000 in rural areas commit suicide than to 10 per 100,000 in urban areas. Between rural and urban males, about a 59% increase in the gap has been there and a 93% increase between rural and urban females.

The researchers put in efforts to account for differences in healthcare access and economic factors. There is a possibility that it can be hard for those in rural areas to get access to mental health. The researchers have found that a higher stigma is there against mental health in rural areas.

According to the authorities, there is also a possibility that having more access to deadly methods of suicide could have increased the gap. The study is published in the journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Pediatrics.

“We kind of expected that there would be a larger suicide rate among rural youth than urban”, said researcher Cynthia Fontanella, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.