Short Literature Review (READ 3 articles and write a summary)

Running Head: Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 1

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide

Jiaqiao Fan

University of California Irvine

William Dewan

SOC SCI 172AW

February 20, 2021

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 2

Abstract:

Behind every suicide, there is a unique reason that is not known until someone kills

himself. Suicide cases have reached a very alarming level nowadays. Especially a spike in the

trend of attempting suicide among youth is seen in the last decade. Suicidal attempts can be

based on a lot of reasons depending upon a person’s insights, thought process, and the strength of

someone’s personality, along with the environmental effects and behaviors on the person.

Reasons like LGBT bullying, youth depression due to bullying because of their body features,

family problems and disconnection with the parents, and homelessness and poverty are mostly

behind the suicide attempts. Studies have shown that family problems are one of the main causes

of producing suicidal peers, and we studied different experimentations, surveys and findings to

conclude that lack of parental affection and caring can be the main reason behind suicide

ideation.

Literature Review:

Family problems and the absence of parental caring affiliated with the chance of youth

attempting suicide is the topic of discussion. Family problems are the most common reasons for

suicidal behavior among youth today. Youth is facing difficulty in talking to their parents, and

that is the most highlighting problem causing the absence of parental caring leading to body

dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, depression and unhealthy weight control behaviors. Studies have

shown that almost half of the suicide attempters do not approach anyone or any adult, including

their parents, to talk about their problems and the other half mostly prioritizes their friends’

opinions more than their parents’ opinions, which leads to the building of weak personalities

causing suicidal thoughts. Researchers have studied in a lot of different environments like high

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 3

school students, deviant peers, alcoholic caregivers, and dropouts from high school. Results have

shown a lot of different factors that are responsible for producing suicidal ideation (SI). A lot of

different random effect models were proposed to measure suicidal ideation (SI). EAT survey was

conducted to ask high school students some questions to analyze the potential suicidal peers.

Results showed that individuals lacking parental caring were most distant from their parents and

were closer to other distractions like friends, alcohol, marijuana, substance use, unhealthy eating

patterns and some more unhealthy obsessions, resulting in suicidal thoughts because of the

rejection they felt from others since childhood till rejecting themselves in their youth.

Emotional health has a lot to do with the person’s physical health. This means that

emotional and mental problems are most likely to lead to a physical health imbalance. Parental

caring is the only way to keep a young adult sane enough to be physically fit. Father-child and

mother-child connectedness help in molding the teen perceptions about valuing the parental

opinions and perceptions about how parental communication and caring affect the teens’

behavior and emotional health. These family closeness problems predict the patterns of teens

either to be normal and healthy or to be drug addicts and suicidal. Studies were done to predict

the alcohol and marijuana addicts in response to suicidal thoughts. Suicidal ideation (SI) can be

measured by CDI that is a childhood depression inventory. These factors depend upon age, type,

race, gender, maltreatment, and bullying and childhood lifestyle and findings suggest that

suicidal peers are different from non-suicidal peers. EAT (eating among teen) survey was

conducted in 2001, whose population-based sample was 4746 high school students from

Minnesota. The sample included 2357 girls and 2377 boys. The EAT survey included 221

questions that were focused on a person’s ideas and beliefs as in, there were questions about the

value of opinions among students, questions about parent-child communication, about their

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 4

weight control behaviors and use of the substance, questions about thoughts on attempting

suicide, about accepting their appearances and self-esteem, about depression, and also questions

related to their parents marital status, their ethnicity and socioeconomic status. All of the data

collected was then analyzed by statistical soft wares like STATA, and the data was interpreted by

charts and graphs produced. The result showed most of the students depends on their parental

opinions to solve their problems. Some boys and girls valued their friend’s opinions over

parent’s opinions for different reasons. Girls that lacked parental caring had a high prevalence of

unhealthy weight control and suicide attempts. While boys, along with these thoughts, also

showed the prevalence of substance use, depression and low self-esteem. (Diann M. Ackard,

2006). This experiment showed that suicidal ideation is directly linked with problematic family

or parental connectedness and the individuals having better bonding with their parents showed

less or no suicidal ideation.

Another study was focused on high school dropouts to predict if they can be suicidal or

not. Participants were 1083 potential dropouts (Randell, June 2006). Among these, there were

different groups who showed different behaviors ranging from not suicidal to less suicidal to

extreme suicidal cases. Ones, who were at high suicide risk, had failed family goals, conflicts

with parents, and family depression showed by the SRB (suicide risk behavior), HSQ, and

MAPS. Results from this study showed that males and females having this background were

almost equally involved in drug addiction with a difference of use of alcohol which was more in

males as well as females. At the same time, females showed more suicide exposure than males.

This study also showed that teens are more likely to use AOD if their family is using it, as

children who lose their parents by suicide are more likely to die in the same way because of the

physiological disorders in response to the trauma. Individuals having suicidal ideation are more

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 5

likely to have an addiction to alcohol and marijuana, and other drugs. To study this relationship,

1050 adults who were subject to child abuse in child welfare were investigated as children at

child welfare are often abused and are more likely to be suicidal and substance addicts because

they are always looking for distractions (Christina M. Sellersa, 2019). Random effect models for

alcohol, marijuana, and suicide ideation were used to analyze the data. Results showed how one

thing led to another as family problems, and disconnection with parents led peers to child welfare

where they were abused, and finally, they started using drugs and became addicts, which led to

rejection and suicide ideation.

Reflection:

Suicide is a very sensitive issue in today’s world. It is the leading cause of death today for

the age 15-24, as recorded by CDC. Suicide ideation mostly hits the youth because of a lot of

different reasons, like bullying mostly. People are maltreated or bullied, and that makes them

suicidal. Here we discussed how family problems can make peers suicidal and how problematic

relationships can cause suicide ideation and provoke peers to kill themselves. When a peer is

facing problems in connecting with their parents or consulting them with any of the problems

they are facing or having problems with general communication with their parents, it leads to the

distancing of the peer from their parents. Afterward, peers do not consult their parents for any

consultation rather, they consult their friends. This practice has shown a very important role in

the peers showing attraction towards suicidal ideas and attempting suicide. As they are away

from their parents, they grow up into teens having a drug addiction, self-esteem problems, basic

self-rejection problems, unhealthy weight control problems, body dissatisfaction, and depression

which are leading causes of attempting suicide.

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 6

Suicide might be provoked because of a peer thinking of himself as a failure, and the

stress and depression from feeling this way might not let him or her life, and that’s how suicide

ideation occurs. Parents nowadays must keep an eye on their children to prevent them from

becoming deviant peers, and they should provide them with all the attention and care in order to

save their children. Also, we should look out for the problematic peers or traumatic teens that

talk about suicide or death a lot and drop hints of what is going on in their subconscious. Single

trauma or abuse can lead a teen to become a drug addict or become a potential suicidal peer

because traumatic experiences give rise to post-traumatic mental sickness, and lack of parental

care can leave a peer in distress and rejection and suicidal thoughts all together leading to suicide

ideation. Studies show that parental displacement can disrupt the adolescent’s interpersonal

environment, leading to decreased feelings of belonging and increased feelings of wanting to die.

Loneliness causes low self-esteem and decreases the desire to live, provoking suicidal thoughts.

Looking at the trend of suicide ideation, we can see how gender, maltreatment type, race, and the

community around the peer can mold the prevalence of a peer towards suicidal thoughts. For

example, females are most likely to attempt suicide than males. A lot of suicide prevention

programs are running, but they need to improve their working and promote parental education so

that parents can actually prevent producing suicidal peers by providing basic support to their

children, and for this, interpersonal communication skills teaching programs must be launched

for all family members.

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide 7

References

Christina M. Sellersa, R. G. (2019). Substance use and suicidal ideation among child welfare

involved adolescents. elsevier.

Diann M. Ackard, P. D.-S. (2006). Parent–Child Connectedness and Behavioral and Emotional

Health Among Adolescents. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Randell, W. H. (june 2006). Family Factors Predicting Categories of Suicide Risk. Journal of

Child and Family Studies, Vol. 15.