Adolescents' image of their suicide attempt.

OBJECTIVE: To inventory the reasons adolescents give for their perceptions of events, thoughts, and feelings in the last days and hours before and during the attempt. METHOD: A semistructured interview also included the administration of an instrument that contained the formulation of reasons. RESULTS: The most frequently mentioned reasons for attempting suicide concerned the cessation of (an unbearable) consciousness. The motivation most frequently named for "crossing the bridge" between thinking about and attempting suicide involved an escalation of frustration and tension. CONCLUSIONS: Special emphasis should be given to family relationships, relationships with peers and friends, frustration tolerance, and the way in which adolescents handle their problems.

The specificity of psychological characteristics of adolescent suicide attempters.

Using a semistructured interview, psychological characteristics were gathered from three groups of adolescents: 48 suicide attempters, 66 depressed, and 43 nondepressed adolescents who never attempted suicide. Various characteristics reported in literature discriminated the attempters from the normal group but not from the depressed group. These characteristics probably are not specific for adolescent suicide attempters. Even when a discriminant analysis was applied, the suicide attempters showed many similarities with the depressed adolescents, although both these groups could be separated from the normal group. Using follow-up data, the quadrants created by the axes appeared to have more implications for prevention than for the a priori group membership.

The relationship between adolescent suicidal behavior and life events in childhood and adolescence.

OBJECTIVE: Although the relationship between experience of problematic life events and adolescent suicidal behavior has frequently been recognized during the past decade, few studies of life events have been initiated that discriminated between adolescent suicide attempters and depressed adolescents. Therefore, the authors compared adolescent suicide attempters with both depressed and nondepressed adolescents who never attempted suicide with respect to life events that happened in two periods: childhood (defined as the period up to age 12 years) and adolescence (age 12 and older). METHOD: Using a semistructured interview, the authors gathered life event data about childhood and adolescence from three groups of adolescents: 48 suicide attempters, 66 depressed adolescents who had never made a suicide attempt, and 43 nondepressed adolescents who had never made a suicide attempt. RESULTS: The group of adolescents who attempted suicide differed from both of the other groups in that they had experienced more turmoil in their families, starting in childhood and not stabilizing during adolescence. During adolescence, they were more often sexually abused. During the last year before the attempt, further social instability, such as changes in residence and having to repeat a class, occurred. CONCLUSIONS: For suicidal adolescents, the suicide attempt seems embedded not just in the problems every adolescent has to deal with but in greater turmoil in their families, rooted in childhood and not stabilizing during adolescence, in combination with traumatic events during adolescence and social instability in the year preceding the attempt.