Suicides are increasing at an alarming rate among Canadian girls, with  hanging, strangulation and other forms of suffocation now the predominant  methods used by children and adolescents — regardless of sex — to kill  themselves.

It’s a disturbing phenomenon that researchers speculate may be linked to the  increasing popularity of the “choking game”, raising the possibility that  unintentional strangulation deaths from the “game” — in which children strangle  themselves or friends in order to cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the  brain and induce a euphoric high — are being recorded as suicides, say the  authors of the report, which also suggests the Internet may be fuelling the  trend.