Suicidal behavior among middle-class adolescents who seek crisis services
✍ Scribed by Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus; Janis Updike Walker; William Ferns
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 535 KB
- Volume
- 52
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0021-9762
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The goal of this study was to assess suicidal behavior and risk factors among 1,616 predominantly middle-class adolescents who were seeking crisis services, either residential or nonresidential. Across recruitment sites, 22.1 Yo reported a past suicide attempt; half reported suicidal ideation in the month prior to seeking services. Attempters were significantly more likely than nonattempters to report suicidal ideation (64.2%), family suicidal behavior (50.5%). and more than twice as likely to have been depressed (37.3%), frequently used alcohol (13.2%), frequently used drugs (10.6%), run away (30.9%), belonged to a gang (6.1%), and destroyed property (5.8%). Suicidal behavior among predominantly White, middle-class adolescents who have sought crisis services appears similar to patterns found among minority youths in Los Angeles and New York City.
The frequency of adolescent suicide has risen more than 300% in the last 25 years; adolescents commit suicide at a rate of 10 per 100,OOO each year (Fisher & Shaffer, 1990). Because suicide remains a relatively rare and unpredictable event, Shaffer, Garland, Gould, Fisher, and Trautman (1988) have argued that research should focus on screening those subgroups of adolescents whose history places them at increased risk for suicidal acts. Adolescents in crisis situations are one such group. For example, Rotheram-Borus (1993) found that 37% of runaways who presented for services at residential shelters in New York City had attempted suicide, which is higher than the rate reported 7 years earlier among runaways in that city (33%, females; 15%, males; Shaffer & Caton, 1984) and in Los Angeles (18.2%; Yates, MacKenzie, Pennbridge, & Cohen, 1988). Studies of runaways typically have focused on minority youth in large coastal cities (Rotheram-Borus, Rosario, & Koopman, 1991; Yates et al., 1988). Stress associated with living in urban settings may influence runaways' suicidality (Rubenstein, Heeren, Housman, Rubin, & Stechler, 1989). However, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV system for classifying psychiatric disorders indicates that adolescents who run away are considered at highest risk for negative outcomes (Shaffer & Piacentini, 1994), so those who run away may be at high risk regardless of geography. Therefore, this study focused on suicidality among adolescents who were seeking crisis services in Oklahoma, not in a large urban coastal center.