Archives of Suicide Research最新文献

Objective: Many people at risk of suicide do not actively seek help. Suicide prevention efforts need to involve the general public to provide appropriate support to those in need. It is important to investigate the intention to help those at risk of suicide and the factors associated with helping intentions in the general population. We aimed to assess the intention to help people at risk and associated factors using a national representative sample.

Method: We conducted a national telephone survey of 1,087 Taiwanese adults and collected data regarding participants' socio-demographic characteristics, mental health status, helping intentions, misconceptions about suicide, and attitudes toward suicide and suicide prevention.

Results: The prevalence of high intentions to help people at risk of suicide was 56.5%. Helping intentions did not differ by sex, educational level, employment status, marital status, or mental health status. Those with high helping intentions were younger, less likely to have misconceptions about suicide or agree that suicide is a personal choice, and more likely to believe that suicide is preventable and support suicide prevention measures.

Conclusions: Suicide prevention education programs aimed to enhance helping intentions may usefully target debunking misconceptions about suicide and cultivating positive attitudes toward suicide prevention.

Introduction: Medical students have been known to face numerous mental health issues at disproportionately high rates. Of pertinence, medical students have been shown to have high rates of suicidal thoughts and behavior. However, little is known about the risks and warning signs for death by suicide in this group. We therefore conducted a systematic review regarding the factors associated with medical student suicide mortality.

Methods: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we conducted searches in six different databases. Studies with stratified data on at least one suicide death by a medical student were eligible for inclusion.

Results: Searches produced a total of 1744 articles, and of those, 13 articles were eligible for inclusion. There was a pooled total of 362 suicide deaths of medical students across five different countries. 67.6% of deaths occurred among male students, primarily in their early twenties. Students in their later years of medical school were shown to be more likely to die by suicide, as were those with a history of psychiatric issues such as depression. Motivations for suicide were academic stress/failure, harassment/bullying, and relationship issues. Warning signs for suicide among medical students were recent changes in mood/behavior and leaving a suicide note.

Discussion: Numerous risks and warning signs of suicide have been described in our review. Medical schools may have an important role in lowering suicide deaths by medical students; impactful change can occur through better support, changes in curriculum, and appropriate data collection.

Objective: This study aimed to identify factors associated with suicidal ideation (SI) in adolescents and to explore the mediating role of depression and hopelessness in these predictive relationships.

Method: Employing a cross-sectional research design, this study included adolescents aged 14 to 19 from Lorestan Province in Iran. A total of 623 middle-school students were selected through a multi-stage cluster sampling technique. Data were collected using a series of assessment tools, including the Depressive Symptom Index-Suicidality Subscale (DSI-SS), the Psychological Strain Questionnaire, the Hopelessness Scale, the Defeat Scale, and the Thwarted Belongingness Questionnaire. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in AMOS version 26 and SPSS version 26 was utilized to evaluate the proposed model.

Results: The findings revealed that in the context of Iranian adolescents, defeat and psychological strains emerge as significant predictors of SI. Notably, hopelessness was found to mediate the relationship between psychological strains, defeat, and SI.

Conclusion: These insights provide valuable knowledge for addressing the issue of SI in Iranian adolescents and may inform future prevention and intervention strategies.

Objective: To examine changes in trends of hospital-presenting suicide-related ideation in older adults living in Ireland, during the first 24 months of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2018-2019.

Methods: Data on presentations of patients aged 60 and older from participating hospitals of the National Clinical Programme for Self-Harm and Suicide-related Ideation were used to compare trends during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) with the preceding period (2018-2019). Poisson regression models were used to estimate trends in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods.

Results: There were 1531 presentations for suicide-related ideation to hospital emergency departments in older adults between January 1, 2018-December 31, 2021, with most presentations involving males (57.2%, n = 876). There was a 27% increase in suicide-related ideation presentations during the pandemic years (2020-2021) when compared to 2018-2019 (RR: 1.27, p = .001, 95%CI: 1.14-1.40), with females showing a 29% increase (RR: 1.29, p = .001, 95%CI: 1.11-1.51) and males a 23% increase (RR: 1.23, p = .002, 95%CI: 1.08-1.40). When examining these trends by years, there were only significant increases in 2021, and no significant increases were observed in 2020.

Conclusions: The study findings show that in the second year following the start of the pandemic, significant increases were observed in suicide-related ideation hospital-presentations in older adults. While immediate changes in trends were not observed in the first year of the pandemic, it is important to consider the pandemic's medium and long-term impact on older adults' mental health, to provide adequate support and reduce suicide risk among those presenting with suicide-related ideation.

Objective: Discovering that an adolescent is self-harming is extremely distressing for parents and this distress can be compounded by lack of easily accessible and well targeted information on what they can do to help. Some research has even suggested that parental distress can be an obstacle to seeking professional help. This paper describes two studies that sought to identify the information needs of parents in the immediacy of discovering self-harm and in ongoing efforts to support their child.

Method: Study 1: on-line survey of 128 parents who had experienced their child's self-harm; study 2: two-round Delphi method with 29 professionals who provide therapeutic interventions to adolescents who self-harm. The primary aim of both studies was to elicit views on parents' information needs in relation to supporting adolescents who self-harm.

Results: There was a high level of agreement between parents and professionals on the needs for information on topics such as: communication, psychoeducation, managing emotional responses, parenting strategies and interventions. The professionals also emphasized the need for parents to practice self-care and the value of teaching alternative coping strategies to adolescents. Parents placed greater emphasis than professionals on the need for information on future therapeutic needs.

Conclusion: Despite the agreement between parents and professionals on most of the information needed, there were sufficient differences in emphasis to confirm the importance of consulting with both groups. The findings can be used to develop information sources that are specifically tailored to the needs of parents at all stages of adolescent self-harm.

Implicit identification with death (i.e., subconsciously self-associating oneself with death), measured by the Death-Suicide Implicit Association Test (D/S-IAT), is associated with Suicide Ideation (SI). Our understanding of the mechanisms underlying this association is limited. The current study examined (1) the mediating role of depression between D/S-IAT and recent SI and (2) the association between SI, D/S-IAT, and clinician evaluation of SI among a clinical sample of adolescents. 148 adolescents aged 10-18 years (69.4% female) from two outpatient clinics were assessed at intake. Participants completed D/S-IAT and self-report measures for recent SI and depression during intake. Findings indicate that depression is a mediator between D/S-IAT and recent SI, controlling for gender, site differences, and past suicidal thoughts and behaviors. D/S-IAT and clinician evaluation were correlated with recent SI but not beyond depression. Our findings highlight the importance of examining the underlying psychological mechanisms regarding the association between D/S-IAT and suicide.

There is a need for well-described treatments targeting individuals at risk for suicidal behaviors. The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of MBCT adapted to individuals who are suicidal (MBCT-S) in a randomized controlled trial, comparing an intervention group receiving MBCT-S and treatment as usual (TAU) with a control group receiving TAU only. Participants who were 18 years or older and experienced suicidal ideation were included. Assessments on suicidal ideation and symptoms associated with suicidal behavior were carried out at baseline, post-treatment, and 12 weeks after the end of the training. When comparing the intervention group with the control group, a significant reduction was found at follow-up in suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms. When focusing on the intervention group only, a significant reduction was found in suicidal ideation, depressive symptoms, hopelessness, worrying, defeat, and entrapment, and a significant increase in mindfulness both at post-treatment and at follow-up. The findings suggest that MBCT-S is a promising suicide-specific intervention as it may have the potential to reduce suicidal ideation and suicide-related components.

According to SAMHSA (2023), approximately 16,600,000 American adults and teens reported having serious thoughts of suicide in 2022. While suicide prevention has primarily focused on suicide deaths and attempts, we contend that suicidal ideation (SI) deserves more in-depth investigation and should be an essential intervention target on its own. In support of this point, we provide three examples of ways to improve specificity in understanding of SI through the study of controllability of SI, the language used to assess SI, and measuring SI in real time. We also consider qualitative work on the content of SI, its treatment, and definitional considerations. We thus call for an increased general focus on SI within research, clinical care, and policy.

A positive trajectory of life after an attempted suicide is extremely limited in research despite its advantage of aiding salutary outcomes. A systematic review of the qualitative research was conducted to explore the impact the attempt of taking your own life has had on your life and your work, to discover what changes participants have made to move toward a life worth living, and to understand how people can help better support individuals from attempted suicide attempts. A comprehensive search of online articles identified thirteen eligible studies. Three themes emerged: (1) rediscovering a life of meaning (2) contextual factors that facilitate a life worth living (3) internal changes. Limitations were discussed along with recommendations for future research.

The persistence of extreme suicide disparities in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth signals a severe health inequity with distinct associations to a colonial experience of historical and on-going cultural, social, economic, and political oppression. To address this complex issue, we describe three AI/AN suicide prevention efforts that illustrate how strengths-based community interventions across the prevention spectrum can buffer suicide risk factors associated with structural racism. Developed and implemented in collaboration with tribal partners using participatory methods, the strategies include universal, selective, and indicated prevention elements. Their aim is to enhance systems within communities, institutions, and families by emphasizing supportive relationships, cultural values and practices, and community priorities and preferences. These efforts deploy collaborative, local approaches, that center on the importance of tribal sovereignty and self-determination, disrupting the unequal power distribution inherent in mainstream approaches to suicide prevention. The examples emphasize the centrality of Indigenous intellectual traditions in the co-creation of healthy developmental pathways for AI/AN young people. A central component across all three programs is a deep commitment to an interdependent or collective orientation, in contrast to an individual-based mental health suicide prevention model. This commitment offers novel directions for the entire field of suicide prevention and responds to calls for multilevel, community-driven public health strategies to address the complexity of suicide. Although our focus is on the social determinants of health in AI/AN communities, strategies to address the structural violence of racism as a risk factor in suicide have broad implications for all suicide prevention programming.