Highlights
- Youth tend to overestimate friends' attempted suicide.
- Misperception of friends' attempted suicide occurs primarily among at-risk youth.
- Overestimating friends' attempted suicide amplifies the risk of attempted suicide.
This study addresses these questions within school-aged youths' friendship networks. Social network data were drawn from two schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, from which 2180 youth in grades 7-12 nominated up to ten friends. A measure of "perceived" friends' attempted suicide was constructed based on respondents' reports of their friends' attempted suicide. This measure was broader than a "true" measure of friends' attempted suicide, constructed from self-reports of nominated friends who attended respondents' schools. Sociograms graphically represented the accuracy with which suicide attempters estimated friends' suicide attempts.
Results from cross-tabulation with Chi-square analysis indicated that approximately 4% of youth (88/2180) attempted suicide, and these youth disproportionately misperceived (predominantly overestimated) friends' suicidal behaviors, compared to non-suicide-attempters. Penalized logistic regression models indicated that friends' self-reported attempted suicide was unrelated to respondent attempted suicide. But, the odds of respondent attempted suicide were 2.54 times higher (95% CI, 1.06-6.10) among youth who accurately perceived friends' attempted suicide, and 5.40 times higher (95% CI, 3.34-8.77) among youth who overestimated friends' attempted suicide.
The results suggest that at-risk youth overestimate their friends' suicidal behaviors, which exacerbates their own risk of suicidal behavior. Methodologically, this suggests that a continued collaboration among network scientists, suicide researchers, and medical providers is necessary to further examine the mechanisms surrounding this phenomenon.
Practically, it is important to screen at-risk youth for exposure to peer suicide and to use the social environment created by adolescent friendship networks to empower and support youth who are susceptible to suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
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By: Zimmerman GM1, Rees C2, Posick C3, Zimmerman LA4.
- Electronic address: g.zimmerman@neu.edu.
- 2Brigham Young University, Department of Sociology, 2019 Joseph F. Smith Building, Provo, UT 84602, USA. Electronic address: carter_rees@byu.edu.
- 3Georgia Southern University, Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, PO BOX 8105, 1332 Southern Drive, Statesboro, GA 30458, USA. Electronic address: cposick@geogiasouthern.edu.
- 4Department of Gastroenterology/Nutrition, Boston Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: lori.zimmerman@childrens.harvard.edu.
- Soc Sci Med. 2016 Apr 1;157:31-38. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.046.
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