What differentiates adolescents who have attempted suicide from those without suicidal history? A retrospective...

History of suicide attempts is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent suicide death. Our aim was to improve the comprehension of behavioral and socio-demographical characteristics of adolescent who have attempted suicide which can accelerate preventive and therapeutical measures.

We retrospectively analyzed medical data of 284 psychiatric inpatients aged 13-18. We performed an univariate and multivariate analyses for the whole group and female and male sex separately followed by a logistic regression analysis. The primary outcome measure was history of suicidal attempt (SA).

115 out of 284 analyzed patients (40.5%) - 91 girls (subgroup 1) and 24 boys (subgroup 2) - had a history of SA. In the whole group SA was associated with female gender, cigarette smoking, nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and neglect of emotional or social needs. In the subgroup of girls the most significant association was found between SA and cigarette smoking, followed by neglect of emotional and social needs, NSSI and the older age of receiving psychiatric help. In boys, the history of SA was associated with two factors: cigarette smoking and family victimization.

The only factor that showed significant association with SA consequently throughout all our study was cigarette smoking, which implies that in the high risk adolescents population cigarette smoking might be a more specific characteristic of the history of SA than NSSI and thus should not be neglected during first examination.