Prevalence and correlates of suicidal ideation and attempts among children and adolescents

Abstract

Suicide is a potentially preventable public health issue. It is therefore important to examine its immediate precursors, including suicidal ideation and attempts, to help in the development of future public health interventions. The present study reports the prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts in the past 12 months in children and adolescents and identifies correlates of such behaviors in a large and diverse sample of middle and high school students. Data were drawn from a representative sample of Ottawa students (n=1922) aged 11-20 years (14.4±1.9 years) from three cycles (2009, 2011 and 2013) of the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS), a cross-sectional school-based appraisal of students in grades 7-12 across Ontario, Canada. Overall, 10.8% of students exhibited suicidal ideation and 3.0% reported suicide attempts in the past 12 months. The conditional probability of making an attempt was 25.5% among suicide ideators. Multivariable analyses indicated that being a girl and using alcohol and cannabis were positively associated with suicidal ideation, while tobacco was positively associated with suicide attempts. Being a victim of school bullying was significantly associated with reports of suicidal ideation and attempts, whereas school connectedness had protective effects against both suicidal ideation and attempts. These results indicate that suicidal ideation and attempts are related to other risky behaviors. Suicide-prevention efforts should be integrated within broader health-promoting initiatives.

Multimodal neuroimaging and suicidality in a US population-based sample of school-aged children

“…We examined individual and environmental characteristics, as well as clinical factors of the child and caregivers that have been associated with suicidality in previous studies [5][6][7][9][10][11]13 . A detailed for use under a CC0 license.…”

“…Rates of suicide deaths and suicidality -defined as suicide ideation, plans and attempts -have risen over 50% amongst young people in the last decade [1][2][3] , making suicide the second-leading cause of death in those aged 10-19 years 2,4 . Whereas individual, environmental and clinical risk factors for suicidality have been well-established [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] , these have demonstrated low predictive validity [15][16][17] . In response, the number of studies examining neurobiological underpinnings of suicidality has grown exponentially in the last two decades 18 .…”

Exposure to physical and sexual violence and suicidal ideation among schoolchildren

“…Results of the adjusted analysis suggest that religious practice might not be a sufficient protective factor against suicidal ideation in the sample, and that part of the effect over suicidal ideation that seemed to be due to the exposure to violence may be explained by individual or family problems with substance use. 11,34 , and higher 12,14,15 than results already found in community and school based samples of adolescents between 11 and 20 years old. Altogether, these data support the increased possibility, already reported 10 , of young people manifesting suicidal thoughts after their transition from childhood to adolescence.…”

“…The main predictor of self inflicted acts with intention to die, defined as suicidal behaviors, is suicidal ideation, which refers to thoughts of wishes, attitudes and plans about dying 7,10,12,13 . It is estimated that 33.4% of adolescents having suicidal thoughts develop a suicide plan, and 33,9% attempt to it 14 , supporting suicidal ideation as one of the most important risk indicators of reaching suicide as an outcome 15 .…”

“…Among the great amount of discussion regarding suicidal behavior and ideation risk and protective factors, some associations stand out. Higher rates of suicide are registered among girls when compared to boys 10,12,14 , among adolescents who are exposed to physical and sexual violence [17][18][19] , who come from dysfunctional families with histories of psychopathology, and alcohol and drugs abuse 7,9,16 , and who abuse of alcohol and other drugs 12,20,21 . On the other hand, many studies have suggested that attending to religious institutions, being more exposed to religious beliefs, and paying more importance to religion reduces the chances of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide itself [22][23][24][25][26][27] .…”