Childhood Adversity, Recent Life Stressors and Suicidal Behavior in Chinese College Students

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough the independent effects of childhood adversities and of recent negative events on suicidality have been well-documented, the combinative role of childhood and recent adversities on risk for suicidality is still underexplored, especially in the context of Chinese culture and in consideration of specific types of negative events.Method5989 students, randomly sampled from six universities in central China, completed the online survey for this study. Suicidal behavior, life adversity during childhood and stressful events in recent school life were assessed with designed questionnaires.ResultsStudents experiencing recent stressful life events more often reported an experience of life adversity during childhood. While recent stressful life events and childhood life adversity both were associated with an increased risk for suicidal behavior, the two exposures presented conjunctively and acted interactively to increase the risk. There was noticeable variation of effects associated with specific childhood life adversities, and sexual abuse, poor parental relationship, divorce of parents and loss of a parent were among the adversities associated with the highest increased risk. Recent conflicts with classmates, poor school performance and rupture of romantic relationships were the recent school life stressors associated with the highest increased risk.ConclusionsChildhood adversity and recent school life stressors had a combinative role in predicting suicidality of young people studying in Chinese colleges. Unhappy family life during childhood and recent interpersonal conflicts in school were the most important predictors of suicidality in this population.

First onset of suicidal thoughts and behaviours in college

“…Longitudinal data were obtained from the Leuven College Surveys (LCS, 2015), which is part of the WHO World Mental Health Surveys International College Student project (WMH-ICS, 2015). Predictors included in this study are well-established risk factors for STB (Nock et al, 2012) that have also shown to be related to college STB: parental psychopathology (Abramson et al, 1998; Wilcox et al, 2010), early traumatic experiences (Gibb et al, 2001; Zhang and Tao, 2013), mental disorders (Paul et al, 2015; Whitlock et al, 2013), and recent stressful experiences (Chou et al, 2013; You et al, 2014). We build on earlier LCS studies that found self-injurious behaviours to be widespread among incoming freshmen (Kiekens et al, 2016; Mortier et al, 2015).…”

Perceived Stress as a Predisposing Factor in Suicidality among Adolescents

“…The findings of this study extend empirical support to Zhang and others [30] and Bender and others [31] who reported positive relationship between stress and suicidal ideation. In some other studies also stress and stressful life events were found to be strongly associated with increased risk of suicide [32][33][34]. Rosiek and others [14] also reported significant positive relationship between stress and suicide.…”

Adverse childhood experiences and neuroinflammatory biomarkers—The role of sex

“…Notably, Khrapatina and Berman () found that three fourths of the college students reported at least one adverse childhood experience (75.5%) and approximately one in five reported an ACE score of 4 or more (21.7%). As with other populations, research among college students also reveals childhood trauma to be associated with physical and mental health problems (Assari & Lankarani, ; Karatekin, ; Kim, ; Mortier et al, ; Runtz, ; Singh, Manjula, & Philip, ; You, Chen, Yang, Zhou, & Qin, ; Velikis, Anagnostopoulou, Mastorakou, Triliva, & Gouva, ). These findings have been replicated in different localities and nations outside the United States including China, India, Turkey, and South Korea.…”