A sharp increase in the rate of suicide among pre-teen girls and teens between 2003 and 2004 drove an overall increase in the reported number of young people committing suicide, federal health officials said today.

They also report that hanging and suffocation have replaced firearms as the preferred suicide method for girls and young women.

After a 28.5 percent decline in suicides among young people ages 10-24 between 1990 and 2003, rates jumped 8 percent in 2004, the largest spike in 15 years, said Ileana Arias, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

“This is a dramatic and huge increase,” Arias said. While it’s not clear whether it’s a one-year spike or the start of a trend, she said, the news signals a need for more effective prevention methods.

The report, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found the biggest increase was in suicides by girls ages 10-14, which increased 76 percent, from 56 in 2003 to 94 in 2004. The report also found a dramatic change in the most common method of suicide by girls, from guns in 1990 to hanging and suffocation.

Hanging and suffocation accounted for 71.4 percent of suicide deaths in girls 10-14, 49 percent in the 15-19 group and 34.2 percent in women 20-24. The change is possibly due to easier access to rope than to firearms, Arias said.

The findings are based on death records from the National Vital Statistics System. No cause for the increase is given, but an article in the September issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry says the increase in youth suicide, which also has been seen in the Netherlands, occurred at the same time there was a decline in prescribing antidepressants known as SSRIs to children and teens, after reports of a link between the drugs and a risk of suicidal thinking in children.

“Obviously, this is a concern,” said Thomas Laughren of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s division of psychiatry products. “It’s true that antidepressant prescribing in pediatric patients has come down, and that coincides with this one-year uptick in suicides,” he said, but there’s no proof the drop in prescriptions caused the increase. He said the FDA will continue to monitor reports.