Suicide Attempts in Adolescents

Ivanova Veronika

doi:10.4236/psych.2021.125046

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present the psychodynamics of the experiences of adolescents who have attempted suicide by attempting to explore the relationships between the desire to die and the early experience of disintegration. During the hospital stay, psychotherapy sessions were conducted with 40 adolescents (28 girls), age 12 - 19, after suicide attempt. An analysis of the data from the protocol records of the sessions with adolescents, we use qualitative interpretative analysis and the main themes, are analyzed in their experiences. The results of content analysis provide a link between the early experiences of mental death from abandonment, which remained unprocessed, and the real desire for suicide, taking into account the role of psychotherapeutic contact, which promotes awareness and pronunciation in words of these experiences, eliminating the unconscious need for their realization in the present. Therapeutic contact, with therapy, focused on the “here and now” modality, helps to create a new object connection between the adolescent and the therapist, which will help the awareness and integration of the early experiences of abandonment by parents.

Highlights

The attempts at suicide in adolescents are not always so easy to recognize in practice, they can conceal under increased interest in high extreme sports, frequent fractures, random poisoning
Psychotherapy sessions were conducted with 40 adolescents (28 girls), age 12 - 19, after suicide attempt
Words and expressions predominate mainly in the category of separation and the feeling of loneliness and abandonment, which in psychotherapy sessions unfolds as more than a specific event, as an internal lack of connection with part of oneself, the most pronounced category is that of lack of meaning and only comes that of death and self-aggression, which confirms the hypothesis that the basis of the desire to commit suicide is precisely the feeling of loss in the sense of reality, but especially in the sense of loss of part of oneself, an unintegrated self, fragile and helpless, despite its outwardly aggressive behavior

Summary

Introduction

The attempts at suicide in adolescents are not always so easy to recognize in practice, they can conceal under increased interest in high extreme sports, frequent fractures, random poisoning. There are different views of the authors, generally dividing them into psychoanalytic and oriented more to behavioural psychology Safer (1997) is trying to find adolescent-adult differences in suicidal behavior. He says they are “similar with respect to their gender ratio, adolescent are different from adults in suicidal behavior in their greater attempt rate, higher attempt/completion ratio, and lower rates of short and intermediate completion following psychiatric treatment”. Other scientists (King et al, 2020) derived 5 profiles of elevated suicide risk with differing patterns of risk factors: history of multiple suicide attempts, past-month suicidal ideation, depression, alcohol and drug misuse, impulsive-aggression, and sexual and physical abuse

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