SUICIDAL ADOLESCENTS PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR FAMILY ENVIRONMENT

This study examined the extent to which adolescents' perceptions of their family environments were associated with suicidal behavior. Fifteen suicidal adolescents, 14 psychiatric controls, and 14 normal controls rated their families on cohesiveness, adaptability, parent-adolescent communication, parental caring, and parental over-protectiveness. Suicidal adolescents rated their families as the least cohesive and most rigid of the 3 groups, suggesting that adolescent suicidal behavior may occur when isolation is experienced within an inflexible family system. Suicidal and psychiatric control adolescents rated their families as similarly dysfunctional along the remaining variables, and as more dysfunctional than families of normal control adolescents. The implications of these findings are discussed, and it is suggested that several characteristics commonly attributed to families of suicidal adolescents may actually be general risk factors for adolescent psychopathology, rather than for suicidal behavior specifically.