Child abuse and the prevalence of suicide attempts among those reporting suicide ideation

Abstract

ObjectiveVictims of child abuse may be at increased risk of acting on suicide ideation, although this has not been empirically tested. We estimated the risk of suicide attempts associated with child abuse among individuals who reported suicide ideation.MethodsSecondary analysis of data from the population-based Canadian Community Health Survey Mental Health (n = 828). This population-based survey included various structured questionnaires, including the Composite International Diagnostic Interview to assess mental illness and suicidal thoughts and behaviours.ResultsApproximately 80 % of those who attempted suicide had a history of child abuse. Poor mental health, financial difficulties, poor coping skills, and reporting a suicide plan were also associated with an increased prevalence of attempting suicide; adjusted for these factors, child abuse was associated with a 1.77-fold increased prevalence (95 % CI 0.93, 3.36) of suicide attempts.ConclusionsMost individuals who attempt suicide experience child abuse, and worse health and social functioning. Adopting a life-course perspective to understand trajectories of suicide risk factors may inform prevention and treatment.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00127-016-1250-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Mediators Linking Childhood Adversities and Trauma to Suicidality in Individuals at Risk for Psychosis

“…Yet, unexpectedly, the role of coping on suicidality was only conveyed by positive coping-strategies but not additionally by negative coping-strategies, which were not significantly correlated with each other. This is in contrast to previous results ( 76 , 77 ) and might be caused by the fact that our CHR-patients rather reported a lack of positive coping-strategies than an excessive use of negative strategies. Furthermore, severe forms of trauma, such as sexual abuse that were predominately linked to an excessive use of negative coping-strategies were rare in our sample.…”

“…However, only perceptual abnormalities and attenuated hallucinations were significantly associated with suicidality. This specific association is in accordance with studies on psychotic-like experiences ( 29 , 77 ) and on patients with psychosis ( 93 ). However, no significant mediation effect of any attenuated psychotic symptom between childhood adversities as well as trauma and suicidality was found in this study.…”

“…Models with the reverse sequence, however, state that exposure to childhood adversities and trauma has an adverse effect on cognitive development ( 80 ), which results in poor coping skills ( 81 ). Ineffective coping skills lead to long-standing difficulties when faced with future stressors, which increases the risk to develop dysfunctional competence/control beliefs as well as depressiveness and suicidality ( 77 , 82 – 84 ). Our results argue for a more complex and synergistic view in that both constructs mutually influence each other, i.e., beliefs about low controllability and few competences reduce the probability to apply positive coping-strategies, which leads to even more dysfunctional beliefs and vice versa .…”

Factors associated with suicide: Case-control study in South Tyrol

“…----------------------------------------------------------temperaments [16,17] or other personality traits [18], childhood trauma [19][20][21], and a family history of suicidal behavior [22][23][24].…”

Early life predictors of adolescent suicidal thoughts and adverse outcomes in two population-based cohort studies

“…Understanding and predicting suicidal thoughts, behaviours, and deaths has proven challenging given the complex aetiology beginning early in the life course [ 3 , 5 , 6 ]. There is a robust literature on suicide risk factors and research has identified a wide range of factors at the individual [ 3 , 7 – 10 ], family [ 11 – 13 ], and neighbourhood levels [ 14 – 16 ] to increased suicidality. However, much previous research have considered risk factors in isolation and predictive power for suicidal outcomes has been low despite over five decades of research attempting to better understand suicidality [ 17 ].…”