Masters Thesis

Risk factors for suicide in adolescents and young adults

Suicide among adolescents and young adults has tripled over the last 30 years. The majority of research which has been conducted on this population has focused on suicide attempts rather than completed suicide. The determination of risk factors for completed suicide is essential in identifying adolescents and young adults at high risk for suicide, for purposes of clinical intervention. The present study compared information obtained in face-to-face interviews with parents of 15 young people aged 14-22 who committed suicide, to information gathered from interviews with parents of young people 14-22 who had never attempted suicide. The obtained information covered the following nine potential risk factor areas: 1) demographic information; 2) life events and precipitating factors; 3) depression and acting out behaviors; 4) family circumstances; 5) family history; 6) drug and alcohol history; 7) suicide history 8) social support; 9) personality traits. Suicide completers were found to be significantly different from controls on investigated characteristics in each of the nine risk factor categories. A combination of variables was selected by linear discriminant analysis as being the optimal set of variables for predicting membership in the suicide group. The observed predictive equation included: 1) loss of a parent before age 12 to death or divorce; 2) change in the parental relationship including separation, divorce, or moving in with someone in the two years precedlng the suicide; 3) no death of a close family member in the two years preceding the suicide; 4) no physical or sexual abuse in the two years preceding the suicide; 5) rejected by a family member in the week preceding the suicide; 6) presence of acting out behaviors; 7) being unassertive or unable to say no; 8) not being described as outgoing. It was concluded that the predictive equation needed to be cross validated on a larger population to test lts usefulness in predicting completed suicide. Further investigation of the reverse direction of the predictor variable physical or sexual assault was suggested for further research.

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