Preventing Teen Suicide

Preventing Teen Suicide

Adolescent suicide is an important public health problem. Each year in the United States, between 2000 and 2500 adolescents under the age of 20 commit suicide. Almost twice as many adolescents commit suicide than die from all natural causes combined. Adolescent suicide prevention is therefore an important goal, which is most likely to be achieved by a better understanding of risk factors and how and when they operate. This article summarizes relevant aspects of what is known about the origins and development of suicidality and suggests ways in which the problem could be reduced. Much of what we know about the characteristics of adolescents who commit suicide is derived from epidemiologically based psychological-autopsy studies. In a study of that kind 120 of 170 consecutive suicides completed by individuals 20 years of age and younger within a 2-year period in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, along with 147 control subjects matched for age, ethnicity, and sex were examined.1 We found that 90% of suicide victims had a diagnosable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death, and more than half of these individuals had experienced significant symptoms for longer than 2 years. The principal psychiatric risk factors were a past suicide attempt (approximately one third of suicide victims had made a previous suicide attempt); symptoms of a mood disorder (approximately 40% of the victims suffered from an affective disorder); and substance abuse, which was frequently comorbid with a mood disorder (approximately one quarter of all suicide victims and two thirds of older males abused substances). Conduct disorder was also common in suicide victims, but was present in many controls, and thus did not emerge as a significant risk factor. About half of the suicide victims had been in contact with a mental health professional prior to committing suicide. In most cases, however, the psychiatric attendance was for a suicide attempt and not for the treatment of mood symptoms.

This study also examined risk factors in the family environment, such as conflict between parents and between parents and children, and other measures of family disruption. After controlling for psychiatric disorder in parents and children, differences on most of these measures were quite trivial, except for a low level of parent-child communication in the suicide victims. No significant differences were found in socioeconomic status between the suicide and control groups. Overall, the findings of this work suggest that a mood disorder and/or a prior suicide attempt are far more important risk factors for suicide than family factors. click here to read the whole article

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