Do more stress and lower family economic status increase vulnerability to suicidal ideation? Evidence of a U-shaped relationship in a large cross-sectional sample of South Korean adolescents

Are social supports associated with suicidal ideation based on gender differences among adolescents in Indonesia?

The proportion of Indonesian junior and senior high school students considering suicide was around 5.2% in 2015. This research analysed the association between social supports and suicidal ideation based on gender differences among adolescents in Indonesia.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study analysed secondary data from the Global School-based Health Survey (GSHS). The 9,333 respondents were aged 11 to 18 years. The dependent variable was suicidal ideation in the past 12 months before the survey. The independent variables were peer support, parent support, and parent attention. The multivariable analysis applied the enter method to examine the adjusted effect causing the dependent variable.

RESULT

Boys had a higher risk than girls of considering suicide on all of the associated independent variables, including boys aged <15 years (AOR 6.134, 95% CI 4.342-8.665), boys in junior high school (AOR 3.160, 95% CI 2.205-4.528), boys with no peer support (AOR 4.230, 95% CI 2.996-5.972), boys with no parental support (AOR 2.481, 95% CI 1.686-3.650) and boys with no parental attention (AOR 3.268, 95% CI 2.292-4.658).

CONCLUSION

Boys with no peer support had a 4.230 times higher risk of suicidal ideation.

A network and mediation analysis on the associations between family environment and suicidal ideation in adolescents in a psychiatric clinical setting

Background

Family environmental factors are known to contribute to adolescent suicidal ideation (SI), but how these factors interact and relate to SI needs further investigation.

Aims

To examine how family factors interact with each other and are associated with adolescent SI in a psychiatric clinical setting, using network analysis with regularization methods.

Method

Utilizing a quantitative research design, this study analyzed data from 293 adolescents aged 12 to 18 years seeking care in a psychiatric hospital. Data collection involved standardized interviews and self-report measures to assess SI, anxiety, depression, and various family environmental factors. Network analysis with regularization methods, including LASSO regression, was employed to elucidate the relationships among these variables.

Results

Over 40% of adolescents reported SI, with positive relationship quality(RQ) significantly reducing SI. Network analysis indicated that family economic status did not directly relate to SI but through RQ. Additionally, anxiety was found to mediate the relationship between RQ and SI significantly, with a mediation effect of 53.34%. Parental marital status directly related to SI, whereas parental education level, particularly mothers', was not directly associated with SI or other mental health outcomes.

Conclusions

This study reveals the complex interplay between family environmental factors and psychiatric symptoms in adolescents, highlighting family relationship quality as a critical risk mechanism. These findings underscore the importance of family-centered interventions and public mental health policies to reduce suicidal ideation in adolescents.

Family economic status and vulnerability to suicidal ideation among adolescents: A re-examination of recent findings

BACKGROUND

According to the "differential vulnerability hypothesis," individuals in adverse socioeconomic circumstances as less mentally resilient to stressful events. However, several recent papers radically challenged this hypothesis based on the accumulated literature on stress inoculation and presented cases in which lower-SES adolescents appear to be less vulnerable to suicidal ideation in the face of interpersonal aggression.

OBJECTIVE

We re-examine the link between psychological vulnerability to acute stressors and SES using yearly longitudinal public survey data from South Korea.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

This is a secondary data analysis of a multi-year public health panel dataset on South Korean adolescents.

METHODS

Logistic regression is used to examine the association between suicidal ideation and a range of predictor variables, with a particular focus on the interaction between bullying victimhood and log family income. These variables and the sample were chosen for consistency with recent revisionist research.

RESULTS

We reaffirm the well-established finding that bullying victimhood strongly and consistently increases the odds of suicidal ideation (OR = 1.859, p < 0.01). However, we find no evidence in favor of the traditional "differential vulnerability hypothesis" or the recently proposed counterhypothesis. A subsample analysis from the latest wave (W4-W5) did produce results that are consistent with recent revisionist findings, but we suggest this is likely a false positive.

CONCLUSIONS

There appears to be no systematic association between SES and vulnerability to suicidal ideation in the face of peer aggression among South Korean adolescents. The claim that lower-SES adolescents may be more resilient to stressful events stands on limited empirical support.

Contextual fallacy in MLMs with cross-level interaction: A critical review of neighborhood effects on psychiatric resilience

In the multilevel modeling literature, contextual effect is defined as or identified by the effect of the target group-level variable while controlling for the corresponding individual-level variable. This paper extends the notion of "contextual effects" (or "neighborhood" or "school" effects) to an interaction setting, such that the effect of one explanatory variable X_ij on the outcome Y_ij is modeled as a function of a group-level 'moderating' or predisposing variable Z_j* as well as its counterpart at the individual level Z_ij. Researchers frequently use regression models that only contain a cross-level interaction between X_ij and Z_j* to test contextual hypotheses in an interaction setting, but this modeling strategy is unable to discriminate the immediate rival hypothesis that attributes a causal role to the corresponding individual-level variable. This paper points out the prevalence of this type of fallacy through a review of past research on contextual determinants of psychiatric resilience. It is argued that the simple step of adding an appropriate individual-level interaction X_ijZ_ij could help more robustly test substantive hypotheses about how neighborhood context alters the effect of proximal stressors on health outcomes.