Teen suicide remains a huge issue, with suicide one of the leading causes of death for teens in the US. But what causes teens to commit suicide or to consider suicide (also known as suicide ideation)? One study showed that being bullied in school is linked to feeling sad and considering suicide (see Messias, E., Kindrick, K., & Castro, J. (2014). School bullying, cyberbullying, or both: Correlates of teen suicidality in the 2011 CDC youth risk behavior survey. Comprehensive psychiatry, 55(5), 1063-1068).
In a recent paper, I worked with a really wonderful team of researchers, led by Professor Jun Sung Hong, to dig a bit deeper on this question especially for Black/African American adolescents/teens living in Chicago. The study was funded by grants from the Center for Health Administration Studies and the STI/HIV Intervention Network at the University of Chicago, which were awarded to Dean Dexter Voisin.
In this analysis, we looked at what might affect teens thinking about committing suicide by looking at how bullying may cause teens to feel hopeless or "blue" (emotional distress), not think about the future (future orientation), not have hope (hopelessness), and use substances (alcohol or drug use). We analyzed data from a survey that Dr. Voisin led of over 400 Black/African American teens (12-22 years old) from the Southside of Chicago pre-COVID (2013-2014). These teens lived in neighborhoods with low resources, including low household incomes and being racially/ethnically segregated (or living in neighborhoods separated from other racial/ethnic groups).
The findings are summarized the graph below.
Source: Hong, J. S., Choi, J., Lawrence, T. I., Yan, Y., Takahashi, L. M., & Voisin, D. R. (2022). Pathways from bullying victimization to suicidal thoughts among urban African American adolescents: applying the general strain theory. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 10-1097.
We found:
Bullying did not always lead to teens considering suicide right away; instead teens saying that they thought about suicide also reported feeling or acting in certain ways;
for these Black/African American teens who reported that they were bullied,
feeling sad or blue did not mean that they did not think about the future or start using drugs
but feeling sad or blue was related to feeling hopeless, and if they felt hopeless then they also said that they did not think much about the future
and feeling sad or blue and using drugs meant that they also said that they thought about suicide
In sum, the connection between bullying and thinking about suicide for these Black/African American teens in Chicago was complicated. These findings mean that suicide prevention should consider where teens are meeting other people (schools, neighborhood) and how violence affects their mental health, thinking about the future, and substance use. We continue to study this issue and how bullying can affect lives for a long time.
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