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What Differentiates Prisoners Who Attempt Suicide from Those Who Experience Suicidal Ideation? A Nationally
Louis Favril1, Bryce Stoliker2, Freya Vander Laenen1
1Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Objective:
Many people who think about suicide do not engage in suicidal behavior. Identifying risk factors implicated in the process of behavioral enaction is crucial for suicide prevention, particularly in high-risk groups such as prisoners.
Method:
Cross-sectional data were drawn from a nationally representative sample of 17,891 prisoners (79% men) in the United States. We compared prisoners who attempted suicide (attempters; n = 2,496) with those who thought about suicide but never made an attempt (ideators; n = 1,716) on a range of established risk factors.
Results:
More than half (59%) of participants who experienced suicidal ideation had also attempted suicide. Violent offending, trauma, brain injury, alcohol abuse, and certain mental disorders distinguished attempters from ideators.
Conclusion:
Our results fit within recent ideation-to-action theories that emphasize the role of a capability for suicide in the transition from thoughts to acts of suicide.
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