Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ArticlesGender Differences in Suicide Attempts From Adolescence to Young Adulthood
Section snippets
Participants
OADP participants were randomly selected from nine senior high schools in western Oregon. A total of 1,709 adolescents (ages 14–18) completed the initial (T1) assessments (interview and questionnaires) between 1987 and 1989, with an overall participation rate of 61%. At the second assessment (T2), 1,507 participants (88%) returned for a readministration of the interview and questionnaire (mean T1–T2 interval = 13.8 months, SD = 2.3). Differences between the sample and the larger population from
Suicide Attempt Rates From Childhood to Young Adulthood
Annual hazard rates in 2-year intervals for first suicide attempts for female and male participants from childhood to young adulthood are shown in the upper portion of Figure 1. Each interval shown in the figure contains the annual hazard rates for that year of age and the preceding year (e.g., the interval labeled “14” consists of the average hazard rates for ages 13 and 14). The survival curves for the two genders were significantly different (Wilcoxon χ21[n = 941] = 12.69, p < .001). As can
DISCUSSION
Several somewhat unexpected findings are noteworthy. First, without disaggregating results for male and female participants, we would have erroneously concluded that the suicide attempt rate decreases from adolescence to young adulthood. In fact, a significant drop in hazard rate is evident only for young women. Future research needs to examine whether annual hazard rates remain at this low level as the participants move further into adulthood.
Disappearance of the gender difference for suicide
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This research was supported in part by NIMH awards MH40501, MH50522, and MH52858.