[Attempted suicide as a reflection of adolescent crisis]

Adolescence is a transitory period in the process of maturation of an individual and, as such, is often accompanied by conduct disorders and different crisis manifestations. These crises often result in suicide attempts which have all the characteristics of an "appeal function". In our group of 200 suicide attempts, we compared the group of adolescent to the group of adult suicide attempts. The comparison was based on a series of different sociodemographic and psychopathological characteristics (e.g. sex, presence of "broken home", method of attempt, family history of psychiatric illness, current psychiatric diagnosis). The results show statistically significant differences between the two groups in relation to some of the characteristics. The paper attempts to explain those differences. Overall results also show that adolescents may be considered as suicide risk group which demands our full attention, particularly from the preventive point of view.