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

Running Head: YOUTH SUICIDE 1

YOUTH SUICIDE 8

Review on Family Factors and Youth Suicide

Jiaqiao Fan

University of California Irvine

William Dewan

SOC SCI 172AW

January 29, 2021

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.

Keywords: youth, suicide, LGBT, minority, family factors, bullying, offenders.

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, causing the absence of parental caring leading to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, depression, and unhealthy weight control behaviors (Ackard, 2006, p.1). All of this is linked to the verbal and physical abuse that youth is facing today from the society. 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 objects like high school students, deviant peers, alcoholic caregivers, and dropouts from high school. This happens when youth faces this kind of problems from the society but lack of parenting and sincerity from their parents stop them from discussing their problems with them. 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 also revealed 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. As we have discussed earlier, 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 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 (Ackard, 2006, p.1). 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.

Besides, suicidal ideation is found also connected with school dropouts. Another study was focused on high school dropouts to predict if they were suicidal or not. Participants were 1,083 potential dropouts (Randell, 2006, p.260). 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), which is a measure of behavior at risk of suicide, HSQ, and MAPS, which are more tests to check the risk of suicide. 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 alcohol and other drug 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 likely to have an addiction to alcohol and marijuana, and other drugs. To study this relationship, 1,050 adults who were subject to child abuse in child welfare, because they had no family so they had to live in the 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. Child welfare have many kinds of people as workers. It is possible that the drug dealers might be working there and selling drugs to children as well as abusers who abuse children because they know their weak spots (Sellers, 2019, p.7). 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.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can say that the abuse and the family problems are the sole reason for the suicidal ideation among youth. If a peer is lacking the parental care he or she is most likely to develop suicide ideation as well. Because besides all the troubles that youth is facing, parental care is something that makes youth less likely to feel lonely as they know that their parents are there to understand them and take care of them. This importance of parental care needs to be learned by the parents and needs to be teach by the social service providers. In this way, we can avoid a big number of suicides and development of suicidal peers having deviant thoughts. Therapy regarding this problem must be promoted at all costs among the communities.

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.

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.

References Christina M. Sellers, 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. Holly C. Wilcox, P. (2010). Children Who Lose a Parent to Suicide More Likely to Die the Same Way. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Katherine A. Timmons, E. A. (2012). Parental Displacement and Adolescent Suicidality: Exploring the Role of Failed Belonging. NCBI. Randell, W. H. (june 2006). Family Factors Predicting Categories of Suicide Risk. Journal of Child and Family Studies, Vol. 15.