Intrapsychic symptom dimensions of adolescent suicide attempters

The research literature on adolescent suicide is unclear as to whether psychopathology underlies the suicide attempt. A group of 46 adolescent suicide attempters were compared with a group of 46 adolescent nonattempters to determine whether suicidal adolescents differed from this comparison group in characteristics of psychopathology. The findings indicated that the attempters exceeded nonattempters on 8 of 11 measures of psychopathology. Such findings suggest that adolescent suicide attempters emit clear signs of psychological distress that can be detected by physicians treating this population.