Interparental Conflict Relative to Suicidal Ideation in Chinese Adolescents: The Roles of Coping Strategies and Meaning in Life.

Rongwei Zhang,Fei Chen,Shihong Liu,Dan Li,Béatrice M Ewalds-Kvist

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01010

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the paths between interparental conflict and Chinese adolescents’ suicidal ideation. Altogether 931 adolescents (Mage = 17.84, SD = 0.77, females = 531) completed the Dyadic Consensus Scale, Self-Report Coping Scale, Meaning in Life Questionnaire, and Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation questionnaires. Mediation analyses were conducted, focusing on the relations between interparental conflict and suicidal ideation along with coping styles and a sense of meaning in life. The results showed that interparental conflict indirectly predicted adolescents’ suicidal ideation via three mediators: coping-approach strategies, presence of meaning, and the joint serial effects of coping-approach strategies and presence of meaning in Chinese adolescents. In addition, boys were more likely to be at risk for suicidal ideation than girls, so were 10th graders compared to 11th graders. These findings supported a combined distress-to-meaninglessness line of thinking along with the use of coping-approach strategies to depress self-harm ideation. Generally, interparental conflict should be kept out of youngsters’ immediate vicinity as a preventive measure of suicidal ideation.

Highlights

China has in recent decades experienced a remarkable economic growth (Nolan, 2007)
This study explored the paths from interparental conflict to suicidal ideation inspired from a distress-to-meaninglessness line of thinking
The results indicated that interparental conflict did not directly predict suicidal ideation (β = 0.03), but it did indirectly predict suicidal ideation in three ways: via the mediator of coping-approach strategies, TABLE 1 | Mean of variables for boys and girls

Summary

Introduction

China has in recent decades experienced a remarkable economic growth (Nolan, 2007). But, in contrast, the country’s non-material facet of well-being has been somewhat neglected (Mok et al, 2010; Shek, 2010); a fact that comes to light in adolescents’ escalating numbers of suicides (Phillips et al, 2002; Shah, 2007). The prevalence of suicides is 10.72% in Chinese students (Li et al, 2014; Tang and Qin, 2015) and self-harm ideation is a precursor to attempted or completed suicide (Zhang et al, 2012; Burke and Alloy, 2016). While suicidal behavior is frequently related to the presence of psychiatric conditions, mood disorders (Pompili et al, 2009) we studied students in real life conditions with no – to our knowledge – known psychiatric history. Coping strategies have been found to predict mental quality of life (Engel-Yeger et al, 2016). Self-harm ideation relative to interparental conflict and coping tactics are presently in the focus of interest

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion