Psychological and neurobiological aspects of suicide in adolescents: Current outlooks

Abstract

Suicidality is one of the leading causes of death among young adults in the United States and represents a significant health problem worldwide. The suicide rate among adolescents in the United States has increased dramatically in the latest years and has been accompanied by considerable changes in youth suicide, especially among young girls. Henceforth, we need a good understanding of the risk factors contributing to suicidal behavior in youth. An explanatory model for suicidal behavior that links clinical and psychological risk factors to the underlying neurobiological, neuropsychological abnormalities related to suicidal behavior might predict to help identify treatment options and have empirical value. Our explanatory model proposes that developmental, biological factors (genetics, proteomics, epigenetics, immunological) and psychological or clinical (childhood adversities) may have causal relevance to the changes associated with suicidal behavior. In this way, our model integrates findings from several perspectives in suicidality and attempts to explain the relationship between various neurobiological, genetic, and clinical observations in suicide research, offering a comprehensive hypothesis to facilitate understanding of this complex outcome. Unraveling the knowledge of the complex interplay of psychological, biological, sociobiological, and clinical risk factors is highly essential, concerning the development of effective prevention strategy plans for suicidal ideation and suicide.

Genetics of Adolescent Suicide: A Literature review

“…Even the genes responsible for neuronal plasticity, neuronal growth, and neuroprotection are reported to undergo epigenetic modification [30,31]. These findings support the stress-diathesis model for suicidal behavior, which suggests that life stressors alone are not exclusively responsible for such behavior but this may aggravate an individual's genetic predisposition, which may trigger off the attempt [32,33]. Researchers have identified life stressors as both proximal and distal risk factors for suicide [34].…”

Classification of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in children: results from penalised logistic regression analyses in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study

“…10 Therefore, there is a need for research into novel measures associated with suicide thoughts and behaviours such as genetics or regional brain activity that have been shown to play a role in these thoughts and behaviour in adolescents. 11 In addition, these studies have not examined whether a combination of factors, instead of examining associations per risk factor, distinguishes children with and without suicidal thoughts or behaviour. Combining different types of risk factors may improve classification over use of individual risk factors.…”

A Systematic Review on Suicide and Youth: Biological, Psychological, Social and Environmental Risk Factors

“…The results revealed that individuals who died from suicide had significantly increased genetic risks for schizophrenia, impulsivity, and major depression (Docherty et al, 2020). Moreover, serotonin is responsible for mood and anxiety, aggressiveness, circadian rhythm, sleep, feeding, and social behavior (Vargas-Medrano et al, 2020;Isarizadeh et al, 2022). Therefore, abnormalities in the serotonergic system are directly implicated in compulsivity and depression, leading to an increase in suicidal behavior (Vargas-Medrano et al, 2020;Turecki et al, 2019;Saadlou et al, 2022;Cha et al, 2018).…”

“…Moreover, serotonin is responsible for mood and anxiety, aggressiveness, circadian rhythm, sleep, feeding, and social behavior (Vargas-Medrano et al, 2020;Isarizadeh et al, 2022). Therefore, abnormalities in the serotonergic system are directly implicated in compulsivity and depression, leading to an increase in suicidal behavior (Vargas-Medrano et al, 2020;Turecki et al, 2019;Saadlou et al, 2022;Cha et al, 2018). Individuals who attempt suicide have decreased cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), the major metabolite of serotonin (Mann, 2013).…”