Context:Different risk factors associated with adolescent suicide attempts have been identified including those of socio-demographic and clinical variables. Relatively, little research has been done in the area of their stressors and coping patterns.Aims:To study the recent psychosocial stressors and patterns of coping associated with adolescent suicide attempts.Settings and Design:Tertiary care hospital, case-control study.Materials and Methods:One hundred consecutive cases of adolescent attempted suicide admitted to the hospital and an equal number of controls, matched individually for age and sex, from the relatives and friends of other patients in the ward, were studied. Assessment included details regarding socio-demographic data, psychiatric and physical morbidity, their recent stressors, and patterns of coping. Stressors were assessed using Presumptive Stressful Life Event Scale and coping strategies by Ways of Coping Questionnaire (revised).Statistical Analysis:Chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis.Results:The number of stressful life events and mean stress scores in the preceding 1 month and certain coping strategies such as confronting, distancing, and escape-avoidance were found to be significant risk factors associated with adolescent suicide attempts. Strategies such as self-control, seeking social support, accepting responsibilities, problem solving, and positive appraisal act as protective factors.Conclusions:Recent stressors and strategies such as confronting, distancing, and escape-avoidance are significant risk factors associated with adolescent suicide attempts, whereas certain coping strategies act as protective factors. Teaching adolescents these protective coping patterns may be a promising strategy for prevention of adolescent suicide attempts.

Background:Intimate partner violence against women is seen in all cultures. It has wide-ranging effects on the physical and psychological health of women. In the local language, available questionnaires are either too exhaustive or inadequate to assess domestic violence comprehensively.Objective:To develop a Domestic Violence Questionnaire in Malayalam and validate it for married women aged 18–55 years in the local population.Study design:Descriptive study – Validation of questionnaire.Materials and Methods:A 29-item questionnaire, to identify domestic violence over the past 1 year, was developed in the local language, by selecting items from two other questionnaires and based on expert opinion. Item reduction was done after pilot testing. Then, this 25-item questionnaire was administered to 276 married women aged 18–55 years. Reliability and validity were estimated. Factor analysis was done for item reduction. Poor-loading, wrong-loading and cross-loading items were removed from the questionnaire. Taking the subjective perception of the participants regarding themselves experiencing domestic violence as the gold standard, a Receiver Operator Characteristic curve was drawn to decide the cut-off score with optimum sensitivity and specificity.Results:The final questionnaire had 20 items – 13 items for psychological and 7 items for physical violence. Internal consistency reliability was 0.92. At a cut-off score of 5, sensitivity was 89.5% and specificity 87.2%.Conclusions:The Domestic Violence Questionnaire in Malayalam has adequate psychometric properties to identify intimate partner violence against women in the local population.