Those who attempted suicide were more than twice as likely as non-attempters "to feel that they had no one to count on," say Lydia O'Donnell, Ed.D., and colleagues of the Education Development Center Inc. Their findings appear in the American Journal of Health Behavior.
More than half of the teens who attempted suicide said that they had not spoken with an adult before their attempt.
"Clearly, adults who may be able to help or intervene in potentially life-threatening situations are not necessarily recognizing or responding to the needs of many of the most vulnerable youth," O'Donnell says.
O'Donnell and colleagues analyzed survey data from 879 11th graders from three neighborhoods in Brooklyn, N.Y. Fifteen percent of the students said that they had seriously considered suicide in the past year, 13 percent had made a suicide plan and 11 percent had attempted suicide at least once.
Some teens in the study appeared to be more vulnerable than others, the researchers found. Girls and Latinos were almost twice as likely to report a suicide attempt in the last years, and teens who said they'd had sex with someone of their same gender were two and a half times more likely to think about and attempt suicide.
Students who discussed their problems with adults were more likely to turn to "their informal networks, especially parents and friends, for help than to more formal sources such as psychologists, counselors or teachers," O'Donnell says.
But many of the students who had talked with an adult in the past "were not necessarily comfortable doing so again in the future," she adds, suggesting that further research is necessary to understand the teens' change of heart.
While suicide rates remained stable for most Amer
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Contact: Lydia ODonnell
lodonnell@edc.org
617-969-7100
Center for the Advancement of Health
24-Nov-2003