Psychological and social predictors of suicidal ideation among young adolescents

Although there is an enormous amount of literature demonstrating socio-psychological determinants of suicide and self-injurious behaviour among adults or clinical samples of children and adolescents, there is a scarcity of studies focussing on non-clinical adolescent samples. The current study examined associations between self-reported data on self-image, physical and psychological health and suicidal cognitions, self-injurious behaviour and suicidal intent in a large representative sample of German high-school students. Almost 1000 German adolescents (aged 14-18 years) were administered a comprehensive series of questionnaires aimed at assessing anxiety-depression, trait addiction, smoking and drinking behaviour, physical ill-health reports and self-perception of self-image, parental acceptance and educational attainment. Several statements were incorporated to assess self-injury and suicidal ideation. An attempt was made to identify risk and offer preventative factors of adolescent suicide. Suicidal ideation is significantly more endorsed among female than male adolescents: twice as many female adolescents tend to have wishes about being dead or have contemplated suicide than males. Girls also tended to have implemented significantly more self-destructive behaviour than boys. Over one-third of the variance observed in subjective reported suicidal ideation was explained by the socio-psychological variables. The common general significant predictor was anxiety-depression, and for males the specific somatic factor was general colds. In contrast, females displayed several specific significant determinants of suicidal ideation, including educational threat and the somatic variable, circulatory ailments. Conversely, tiredness, social problems and maternal rejection were statistically significant predictors of suicidal ideation but again the direction of impact was opposite to what was anticipated.