Factors Accounting for Youth Suicide Attempts in Hong Kong: Model Building
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Journal of Adolescence xxx (2010) 1–8
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Adolescence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jado
Factors accounting for youth suicide attempt in Hong Kong: A model building
Gloria W.Y. Wan a, Patrick W.L. Leung b, * a b
Clinical Psychology Service, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council, 5/F, Holy Trinity Bradury Center, 139 Ma Tau Chung Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China 3/F, Sino Building, Clinical and Health Psychology Centre, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China
a b s t r a c t
Keywords: Suicide ideation/attempt Family Psychopathology Life events/stressors Chinese youths
This study aimed at proposing and testing a conceptual model of youth suicide attempt. We proposed a model that began with family factors such as a history of physical abuse and parental divorce/separation. Family relationship, presence of psychopathology, life stressors, and suicide ideation were postulated as mediators, leading to youth suicide attempt. The stepwise entry of the risk factors to a logistic regression model defined their proximity as related to suicide attempt. Path analysis further refined our proposed model of youth suicide attempt. Our originally proposed model was largely confirmed. The main revision was dropping parental divorce/separation as a risk factor in the model due to lack of significant contribution when examined alongside with other risk factors. This model was cross-validated by gender. This study moved research on youth suicide from identification of individual risk factors to model building, integrating separate findings of the past studies. Ó 2009 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction Youth suicide, being one of the three leading causes of death in young people, has been a focus of research. Various individual risk factors have been
Journal of Adolescence xxx (2010) 1–8
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Adolescence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jado
Factors accounting for youth suicide attempt in Hong Kong: A model building
Gloria W.Y. Wan a, Patrick W.L. Leung b, * a b
Clinical Psychology Service, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council, 5/F, Holy Trinity Bradury Center, 139 Ma Tau Chung Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China 3/F, Sino Building, Clinical and Health Psychology Centre, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China
a b s t r a c t
Keywords: Suicide ideation/attempt Family Psychopathology Life events/stressors Chinese youths
This study aimed at proposing and testing a conceptual model of youth suicide attempt. We proposed a model that began with family factors such as a history of physical abuse and parental divorce/separation. Family relationship, presence of psychopathology, life stressors, and suicide ideation were postulated as mediators, leading to youth suicide attempt. The stepwise entry of the risk factors to a logistic regression model defined their proximity as related to suicide attempt. Path analysis further refined our proposed model of youth suicide attempt. Our originally proposed model was largely confirmed. The main revision was dropping parental divorce/separation as a risk factor in the model due to lack of significant contribution when examined alongside with other risk factors. This model was cross-validated by gender. This study moved research on youth suicide from identification of individual risk factors to model building, integrating separate findings of the past studies. Ó 2009 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction Youth suicide, being one of the three leading causes of death in young people, has been a focus of research. Various individual risk factors have been