Resilience to suicidal behavior in young adults: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Despite decades of research on suicide risk factors in young people, there has been no significant improvement in our understanding of this phenomenon. This study adopts a positive deviance approach to identify individuals with suicide resilience and to describe their associated psychological and sociodemographic profiles. Australian young adults aged 18–25 years with suicidal thoughts (N = 557) completed an online survey covering sociodemographic, mental health status, emotion regulatory and suicide-related domains. Latent class analysis was used to identify the individuals with suicide resilience. The predictors of suicide resilience were assessed using logistic regression models. The results suggested that one in ten (n = 55) met the criteria for suicide resilience. Factors that had a significant association with suicide resilience included greater cognitive flexibility, greater self-efficacy in expressing positive affect, reduced use of digital technology and less self-harm and substance use as a response to emotional distress. This study identified the factors that may protect young adults with suicidal thoughts from progressing to suicide attempts. Suicide prevention programs might be optimised by shifting from a deficit-based to a strength-based approach through promoting cognitive flexibility, self-efficacy and reducing maladaptive coping.

Prevalence and predictors of suicidality among nursing students in Indonesia

“…Students with low resilience had 2.044 times higher risk of suicidality than those with high resilience. In accordance with our study, several studies have indicated that low resilience is a significant risk factor for suicidal ideation among adults (Han et al, 2022), adolescents (Stark et al, 2022), and university students (Okechukwu et al, 2022). Resilience, defined as an individual's capacity to cope adaptively, overcome adversity, and bounce back after stress-ful life events (Sher, 2019), was cited as a protective factor against suicidal behavior.…”

“…Items with unfavorable statements (items 2, 5, 6, 8, 9) were scored as follows: 4 (strongly disagree), 3 (disagree), 2 (agree), 1 (strongly agree) (García et al, 2019). The RSES has a total score between 10-40, based on which, self-esteem can be categorized into 3 levels: low (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25), moderate (26)(27)(28)(29), and high (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40) self-esteem (García et al, 2019). The Indonesian version of the RSES has been validated in a previous study and has high internal reliability -as indicated by Cronbach's α = 0.875 (Kaloeti and Ardhiani, 2020).…”

“…The UCLA-3 consists of 20 question items, and each item is measured on 4-point Likert scale. The score ranges from never (1 point) to often (4 points) for items with negative statements (items 2, 3,7,8,11,12,13,14,17,18) and ranges from often (1 point) to never (4 point) for items with positive statements (items 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15, 16, 19, 20) (Lee and You, 2020). The UCLA-3 has a total score of between 20-80, and higher scores indicate a higher loneliness intensity.…”

Suicide resilience: A concept analysis

“…Kleiman et al ( 36 ) reported that participants with a high level of gratitude and grit were characterized with greatest reduction in suicidal ideation over time. Other variables, such as self-efficacy and mindfulness, have been demonstrated to have the same functioning ( 9 , 49 ).…”

“…Although it has different meanings in different contexts, resilience generally refers to the ability, outcome, or dynamic process of overcoming adversity adaptively ( 8 ). With the observation of the fact that a number of individuals exposed to high suicide risks would not be suicidal, researchers in the suicide field have become more and more interested in the phenomenon of resilience ( 9 ). Empirical findings have indicated that resilience represents an intermediate between suicide risk factors and suicidality, and may mitigate the adverse effect of suicide risk factors ( 10 , 11 ).…”