Predicting Suicidal Ideation Among Native American High Schoolers in California

Suicide is the leading cause of non-accidental death for Native American young people ages 15-24. Alarmingly, suicide rates have continued to rise over the past decade despite ongoing prevention efforts. This shortcoming has urged some scholars to (re)examine dominant theoretical models to better direct suicide prevention efforts in tribal communities.

Using Indigenous Wholistic Theory, this study used an algorithmic approach to identify a broader set of factors associated with suicidal ideation among Native American high school students in California (n = 2,609). Data were drawn from the 2019-2020 California Healthy Kids Survey, a statewide school-based dataset. Lasso penalized regression was employed to select the most predictive variables for suicidal ideation from a set of 17 candidate factors.

Ten predictors were retained in the final model: depressive symptoms; school-based victimization; sexual and gender minority status; lifetime use of alcohol, vapes, and cannabis; breakfast consumption; access to alcohol and other drugs; and parent education level.

A combination of factors spanning individual, emotional-social, mental-political, and physical-economic domains predicted individualized risk for experiencing suicidal ideation. These findings underscore the need to move beyond psycho-centric models and toward more comprehensive understandings of suicide-related behavior among Native American youth.