Youth and young adult suicide: A study of life trajectory
Section snippets
Recruitment of informants
Through an ongoing partnership with the Quebec’s Coroner’s Office and the Montreal Central Morgue, our research group recruited consecutive suicides representative of suicides occurring in the region. Once referred by the coroner’s office, 75% of close relatives agreed to participate in the study. Suicides are assessed by psychological autopsy, a validated method (Conner et al., 2001, Kelly and Mann, 1996, Schneider et al., 2004) involving closest relatives best acquainted with the deceased
Coding procedures
After all the data were collected, the coding procedure is done quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative data consist of identifying every event, the severity and duration of each event occurring over every five-year period. As for the qualitative coding procedure, each individual life trajectory was written up by the interviewers as a case vignette summarizing all life events, their context, adversity and protective factors, psychopathology and use of services. Then, each vignette
Data analysis
Data analysis for the clinical results was carried out using SPSS. For the life trajectories the analysis were carried out with SAS group-based modeling of longitudinal data (Jones et al., 2001). Regressions analysis were used with SPSS, and the SAS-based Traj procedure (Nagin and Tremblay, 2001) provided the capacity to a) identify subgroups of people who followed distinct trajectories based on the severity of their difficulties, b) examine the pattern of variation and stability over time for
Sociodemographic profile
Among participants, 80.6% (n = 54) in the suicide group (SG) and 76.8% (n = 43) in the control group (CG) were men. There was no difference in the distribution of age when comparing SG with CG: 6% and 5.4% younger than 15 years old; 30% and 35.7% between 15 and 19 years old; 58% and 50% between 20 and 24 years old; and finally 6% and 9% between 25 and 29 years old. Almost all were Caucasian: 94% for the SG and 96% for the CG.
Psychopathological profile
There is an important difference between the suicide and the control
Discussion
The results of this study with 67 suicide victims and 56 control participants indicate a difference in the trajectories of the SG compared with the CG. Good control group allows a measure of the populational distribution of risk factors and outcomes. Participants in the control group were not as exposed to hardship, and did not develop as much mental health problems over time as the suicide group, but they were not «super healthy». Indeed, 12% of the participants had major mental health
Conclusion
Suicide among young adult rarely occurs “out of the blue” (Bebbington et al., 2009), but rather in a context of major difficulty and adversity, present from a very young age. The importance of conflictual interactions–first in the parent–child relationship, later at school, with friends—the presence of the social isolation speaks to the lack of protective ability between family members and constitutes a major risk factor for suffering, distress, mental problems and suicide. Numerous authors (
Funding source
This research has been funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), the funding source has no involvement in the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Conflict of interest
We have no conflict of interest, personal nor financial. The findings did not limit the ability of the authors and the authors were in control of all primary data.
Contributors
Monique Séguin with Johanne Renaud designed the study, wrote the protocol and were responsible for the data analysis; Alain Lesage was responsible for data analysis and reviewed the first draft of the article; Marie Robert searched the literature review and helped in the writing of the first draft and Gustavo Turecki read and reviewed the manuscript. Each of the authors has reviewed the manuscript, agreed to be cited as co-author and has accepted the order of authorship.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
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