Association of Parent and Offspring Religiosity With Offspring Suicide Ideation and Attempts

Abstract

IMPORTANCE Previous studies have shown an inverse association between offspring religiosity and suicidal ideation/attempts, but the association of parent religiosity on offspring suicidal ideation/attempts has not been examined. OBJECTIVE To examine associations of parent and offspring religiosity with suicide ideation and attempts in offspring. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS The study is based on offspring (generation 3) from a 3-generation family study at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, in which generations 2 and 3 were defined as being at high risk or low risk for major depressive disorder because of the presence or absence of major depressive disorder in generation 1. The association between suicidal behaviors (ideation/attempts) and parent and offspring religiosity in generation 3 offspring aged 6 to 18 years (214 offspring from 112 nuclear families) was examined. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Parents' psychiatric diagnoses and suicidal behaviors were assessed with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, and offspring were independently assessed using the child version. Two measures of religiosity were assessed: religious importance and religious attendance. Logistic regressions in the framework of generalized estimation equations were performed to analyze offspring suicidal behaviors while adjusting for sibling correlation and offspring age, sex, and familial depression risk status. RESULTS Of 214 offspring, 112 (52.3%) were girls. Offspring religious importance was associated with a lower risk for suicidal behavior in girls (odds ratio [OR], 0.48; 95% CI, 0.33-0.70) but not in boys (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 0.74-1.80) (religiosity by sex interaction, P = .05). Religious attendance was associated with a lower risk for suicidal behavior in girls (OR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.49-0.84) but not boys (OR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.69-1.27) (religiosity by sex interaction, P = .17). Parent religious importance was associated with a lower risk for offspring suicidal behavior (OR, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.41-0.91) but not parent religious attendance. When parent and offspring religious importance were considered simultaneously, we found a lower risk associated with parental religious importance (OR, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.39-0.96) independent of offspring importance. These associations were independent of parental depression, marital status, and parental suicide ideation. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this study, parental belief in religious importance was associated with lower risk for suicidal behavior in offspring independent of an offspring's own belief about religious importance and other known parental factors, such as parental depression, suicidal behavior, and divorce.

Family Risk for Depression and Prioritization of Religion or Spirituality: Early Neurophysiological Modulations of Motivated Attention

“…For participants indicating high personal importance of R/S in adolescence or young adulthood, emotional ERPs characterizing early (200 ms), rightlateralized emotional arousal of occipitotemporal (extrastriate) cortex (Kayser et al, 2016) were enhanced for individuals at low risk but were reduced for individuals at high risk. These findings are consistent with prior clinical and neurophysiological evidence suggesting that personal R/S importance may function as a protective buffer against stressful (lifetime) events (i.e., resilience against MDD; e.g., Miller et al, 1997;Svob et al, 2018), presumably by preventing harmful, affective (over-)arousal downstream. Furthermore, the findings implicate a specific neurofunctional mechanism of emotion regulation (Rive et al, 2013;Tang et al, 2015) underlying certain health benefits linked to personal importance of religion and spirituality.…”

“…Maternal R/S importance and mother-offspring concordance of R/S was associated with a 90% reduction of risk for incurring a depressive episode at 10-year follow-up (Miller et al, 1997), and offspring with high R/S importance had a 75% risk reduction of experiencing MDD 10 years later, particularly for those who were at high family risk because of a depressed parent (Miller et al, 2012). Parental R/S importance was associated with lower risk for suicidal behavior in offspring (Svob et al, 2018). High R/S importance was also associated with less cortical thinning (Miller et al, 2014), a putative morphologic endophenotype of familial risk for MDD (Peterson et al, 2009).…”

The association of religiosity with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in the United Kingdom

“…First, more detailed series of questions on religiosity (e.g., duration, strength, religious service attendance, or parent religiosity) would have allowed for a better estimation of the religiosity–suicidality relationship. In particular, religious service attendance and parent religiosity have also been associated with lower risk for suicidality, and these factors should be examined in future studies. Second, suicidality was assessed with self‐reports.…”

Características Epidemiológicas del Intento Suicida en Adolescentes

“…al, donde se ha demostrado que las tasas más altas de suicidio ocurre en los protestantes (31,4 / 100.000) (10) , pero contrasta con Connie Svob et. al ; quien indica que la creencia religiosa de los padres y la asistencia a la iglesia, independientemente de la creencia de los hijos, disminuye hasta un 80% el riesgo de suicidio en los hijos (11) . Otro factor de riesgo encontrado en el estudio fue en cuanto al tutor de los adolescentes, ya que solo el 38.2% de ellos vivían con ambos padres, el vivir solo con uno de los padres ya sea por separación o viudez, o el vivir sin los padres aumenta el riesgo de intento suicida (12) .…”