Parent-adolescent communication and its relationship to adolescent depression and suicide proneness

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents in the United States, and the rates in this age group are increasing. A possible factor related to adolescent suicide may be inadequate or insufficient parent-adolescent communication. The purpose of this study was to investigate the communication level between selected adolescents and their parents, and to determine its relationship to the parents' perceptions of their adolescent's depression and proneness to suicide. The Parent-Adolescent Communication Inventory (PACI) was used to measure communication, and the Suicide-Depression Inventory (SDI) was used to measure depression and suicide proneness. Upon statistical analysis of the instrument scores, simple correlation coefficients expressed significant relationships between mother's and adolescent's scores, but not between father's and adolescent's scores. However, when controlling for other independent variables, neither the father's nor the mother's scores were significantly related to the adolescent's SDI score. The adolescent's PACI score was the only independent variable that produced a significant semi-partial correlation coefficient. A multiple regression procedure isolated only one of the independent variables which entered and stayed in the predictor model at the .05 level--the adolescent's PACI score (p = .001).