Suicide in Adolescents

In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established that 6.3% of high school students have attempted suicide in the preceding year. Given the lethal consequences of suicide attempts, determining risk factors among adolescents becomes especially important. Generally speaking, psychiatric disorders and substantial psychosocial impairments are known to be associated with suicide attempts. However, previous research attempting to identify specific risk factors in adolescents is somewhat ambiguous. Nonetheless, one thing is consistent. When measuring the risk of an adolescent committing suicide, information must come from a variety of sources and perspectives. These sources may include but are not limited to a clinical interview with the adolescent, information provided by the parent or guardian, standardized assessments and previous psychiatric documents from the individual.

Furthermore, past research has shown that self report intruments have yielded clinically significant results. Specifically, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, Suicide Probability Scale and Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior High Version were particularly sensitive in measuring risk factors and predicting suicide attempts over a six month period. Despite the sensitivity of these self report measures, one issue remains. Adolescent males commit suicide 3.6 times more than their female counterpoarts. However, males report having suicidal thoughts and report that they consider commiting suicide less frequently than females do. Therefore, there is an obvious gap between the suicidal thoughts that adolescent males report, and actual suicide attempts. Gender therefore becomes a moderator of the value of self reported suicidal ideation amongst adolescents....

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...e hospital. This therefore limits the ability of the results about the SIQ-JR as a predictor for suicide attempts to any adolescent who may be suicidal, but is not admitted to a hospital. This would carry a high clinical significance because patients who are not admitted to hospitals have significantaly less supervision. Monitoring and predicting suicide attempts in this population would be exceptionally important.

Another factor that was not controlled for was personality disorders. Given the limitations in the SIQ-JR’s ability to predict suicide attempts in males, it is important to look at all factors that could help increase the success and accuracy of suicide risk assessments. It is possible that knowledge of personality disorders among male participants would help detect suicidal ideation when these participants are less willing to report suicidal feelings.