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 Americans between 1980 and
1995, the rate more than doubled among black youth. Rates remained high
but unchanged among Latino adolescents.
The study was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
