Reducing suicide risk in parentally bereaved youth through promoting effective parenting: testing a developmental...

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Public Health
• Child Development

Background:

• Parental death significantly increases suicide risk in children.
• The Family Bereavement Program (FBP) is an intervention designed to mitigate this risk.
• Previous research indicates FBP reduces suicide risk in bereaved youth long-term.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if FBP-induced improvements in effective parenting mediate changes in proximal risk factors for suicide.
• To examine the cascading pathway from parenting to self-views, connectedness, grief, depression, and emotion suppression.
• To assess the long-term (6 and 15 years) impact of these mediated effects on suicide risk.

Main Methods:

• A randomized controlled trial involving 244 bereaved youth and 156 families.
• Intervention group received the Family Bereavement Program (FBP); control group received literature.
• Multimethod, multiinformant data collected at baseline, posttest, 6-year, and 15-year follow-ups.

Main Results:

• Effective parenting improvements at posttest were linked to reduced aversive self-views and increased caregiver connectedness at 6-year follow-up.
• These mediators (aversive self-views, caregiver connectedness) were subsequently associated with reduced suicide risk at 6 and 15 years.
• The pathway via aversive self-views remained significant even when controlling for caregiver connectedness.

Conclusions:

• FBP-induced parenting improvements play a crucial role in reducing suicide risk among parentally bereaved youth.
• Self-related concepts, such as aversive self-views, are important targets for upstream suicide prevention strategies.
• Interventions focused on enhancing parenting and addressing negative self-perceptions show long-term promise for suicide risk reduction.