Urban adolescent girls who have been hit or physically hurt by a boyfriend in the past year are 60% more likely to attempt suicide than those who have not, reported Dr. Elyse Olshen of Columbia University, New York, and her associates.
For urban adolescent boys, date violence does not raise the risk of attempted suicide, but a history of being sexually assaulted does. And for both boys and girls, those who say they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or unsure of their sexual orientation are more likely to attempt suicide than are those who identify themselves as heterosexual.
Clinicians “should have a low threshold for referring these at-risk teenagers for mental health services,” the researchers said. One way to avoid these problems is to routinely screen urban youths for these risk factors, they said.
Dr. Olshen and her associates examined the relationships among dating violence, sexual assault, and suicide attempts using data from the 2005 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a biennial survey of public high school students conducted in states and localities across the United States and supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They analyzed the results from a New York City sample that was predominantly African American and Hispanic–representative of that city's general high school population and generalizable to urban youth populations throughout the United States.
A total of 8,080 students from 87 New York City schools answered the anonymous and voluntary 99-item questionnaire. A total of 40% of girls and 24% of boys reported persistent sadness during the preceding year, and about 20% of girls and 10% of boys reported suicidal ideation.
Nearly 12% of girls and more than 7% of boys reported one or more serious suicide attempts in the preceding year, the investigators said (Arch. Pediatr. Adolesc. Med. 2007;161:539–45).
Nearly 10% of girls and more than 5% of boys reported a lifetime history of sexual assault. The prevalence of dating violence in the preceding year was nearly 11% among girls and nearly 10% among boys.
Recent dating violence was associated with a 60% higher risk of attempted suicide among girls. “This association is similar in magnitude to that reported among predominantly white adolescent girls” in studies from two New England states, which suggests that there are no major racial or ethnic differences in the relationship between violent or sexual victimization and suicide attempts, Dr. Olshen and her associates said.
For adolescent boys, recent dating violence was not associated with suicide attempts, but a history of sexual victimization was. “These marked differences between adolescent boys and girls are striking and bear further investigation,” the researchers noted.