Abstract
Suicide occurs more often in older than in younger people, but is still one of the leading causes of death in late childhood and adolescence worldwide. This not only results in a direct loss of many young lives, but also has disruptive psychosocial and adverse socio-economic effects. From the perspective of public mental health, suicide among young people is a main issue to address. Therefore we need good insight in the risk factors contributing to suicidal behavior in youth. This mini review gives a short overview of the most important risk factors for late school-age children and adolescents, as established by scientific research in this domain. Key risk factors found were: mental disorders, previous suicide attempts, specific personality characteristics, genetic loading and family processes in combination with triggering psychosocial stressors, exposure to inspiring models and availability of means of committing suicide. Further unraveling and knowledge of the complex interplay of these factors is highly relevant with regard to the development of effective prevention strategy plans for youth suicide.
Highlights
Suicide is defined as a fatal self-injurious act with some evidence of intent to die [1]
Most literature on youth suicide refers to school-age children (7–12 years) and adolescents (13–20 years)
It is possible to identify different types of factors that are clearly associated with an increased risk of youth suicide, so this is highly relevant with regard to prevention
Summary
Suicide is defined as a fatal self-injurious act with some evidence of intent to die [1]. The male-to-female ratio varies between 4 to 1 (Europe and Americas) and 1.5 to 1 (Eastern Meditarranean and Western Pacific region), and is highest in richer countries [4] These suicide figures are probably still an underestimation of the real cases. In Europe, where youth suicide rates are tending to decrease, suicide is ranked as the second most frequent cause of death in the 10–19 year age group. It is even the most frequent cause of death among females aged 15– 19 years (6.15 per 100,000). This mini review gives a short overview of the most important risk factors as established by scientific research in this domain
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