The causes of the spread of suicidal thoughts in adolescence

In recent years, scientific research has begun to delve into the analysis of suicidal ideations, also due to their spread. These thoughts, unlike suicide, constitute an object of study on which it is possible to collect data directly from the subjects involved in the problem. A study on a sample of over 4,000 high school students carried out by the CNR’s MUSA group underlines the importance of the deterioration of human relationships in the emergence of suicidal thoughts in adolescence.

Suicidal ideation, which actually leads to committing suicide in one case out of three, concerns every thought oriented towards planning suicide, its desire, and also concerns about death. This phenomenon has significantly increased in recent years worldwide, particularly among adolescents and as a psychosocial effect of the spread of COVID-19. It doesn’t seem to have been so much the virus that caused the problem to spread, but rather the abrupt interruption of face-to-face relationships that followed, and then the subsequent acceleration of the transposition of human interaction onto the virtual level; process that has generated an exponential growth of anxiety, depression and other primary negative emotions among young people (anger, anxiety, sadness).

It is during the COVID-19 pandemic that health organizations began recording a dramatic increase in mental health-related emergency room visits among those aged 12 to 17, with a 50 percent increase in suspected suicide attempts. .6% among girls aged between 12 and 17 and 3.7% among their male peers compared to 2019. This effect of the pandemic was far from fleeting: on the contrary, it became chronic as the weather. Data from the Italian association that provides emergency services and telephone support have indicated as early as 2021 that requests for help from people thinking about suicide or fearing the possible suicide of someone close to them have increased by 55% compared to 2020 and almost quadrupled compared to 2019, particularly among young people.

Suicidal thoughts during adolescence: a critical phase

Although adolescence is a notoriously substantial evolutionary phase in the individual’s life, a moment of transition to adulthood, during which family, school and environmental experiences are synthesized, the explosion of suicidal ideations makes it clear how recent years have made this phase of life decidedly more critical.

Although it has been demonstrated that both suicide and suicidal ideation constitute social constructs that should be analyzed with reference to the specific socio-cultural norms and attitudes of each community, one of the most persistent problems relating in particular to the prevention of suicidal thoughts still concerns today the lack of interdisciplinarity of studies and approaches and the widespread belief that these are problems originating from largely individual factors. It is worth remembering that until 1800 suicide was perceived as a strictly personal act, devoid of social and cultural connotations. Only with the research of sociologist Emile Durkheim did suicide begin to be understood as a “social fact”, closely related to the degree of social integration and community norms.

Apart from the psychiatric implications, suicide and suicidal ideation therefore represent multifactorial phenomena. Yet, the prevailing tendency reads these problems as characterized by psychological causes somehow extraneous to the context of life. It is clear that, when we focus on the phenomenology of the suicidal scenario, mental pain appears useful for understanding the source of suffering for those who experience suicidal desires: but, even in an increasingly interconnected society like ours, the robustness of the connection escapes between this suffering and intersubjectivity.

The importance of the social sphere emerges from a study on adolescents

These considerations are supported by the results of a research conceived and conducted in 2023 within the multidisciplinary group Social changes, evaluation and methods (MUSA) of the National Research Council (CNR). The study, published in the international journal Scientific Reportswas created with the aim of strengthening the scientific understanding of the emergence of suicidal thinking among adolescents, through the simultaneous analysis of the influence of socio-demographic, psychological and sociological factors on the production of the problem.

For this reason, data taken from the responses given by a representative sample of 4,288 Italian adolescents attending public secondary schools were taken into consideration.

In addition to mapping the spread of suicidal thoughts, which today involve around half of Italian adolescents (44.9% have experienced them at least once), the study allowed the identification of the mechanism of the development of this problem during adolescence .

The results confirmed the existence of a direct association between psychological distress and suicidal thoughts, clarifying however that, excluding psychiatric implications, it does not determine, but on the contrary is determined by the deterioration of human interaction. It is the social sphere that thus emerges as the main object of research for the purposes of understanding and treating the problem of suicidal thoughts.

Compared to socio-demographic status, these ideas mainly characterize:

• girls (6 out of 10 versus 4 out of 10 for boys);
• those who live in the northern areas of the country;
• those who have a foreign citizenship;
• those who attend technical institutes;
• non-believers;
• those with a low economic family background.

As demonstrated by the multinomial logistic regression models developed within the study, however, specific characteristics of relational status and social interaction are at the origin of the phenomenon.

Specifically, suicidal thoughts arise from impaired mental health characterized by anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, happiness and satisfaction, high intensity of primary negative emotions and a negative attitude towards the future.

However, these aspects are only symptoms and not causes of the problem, i.e. symptoms of the presence of a close and unsatisfactory friendship network, of qualitatively poor relationships with peers and parents, of problems with academic performance, hyper-connection, body dissatisfaction and also of involvement as victims in incidents of bullying and cyberbullying.

More attention is needed to changes in social interaction

Simultaneously verifying the direct and indirect influence of multiple variables of both a sociological and psychological nature has made it possible to resize previous scientific results, showing how factors usually considered influential on the phenomenon, such as tolerance to the use of alcohol and psychotropic substances in general, are in fact absolutely secondary to the purposes of its explanation.

When even today, at a global level, the vast majority of studies on suicidal thoughts exclusively analyze the psychological aspects of the phenomenon, which in fact constitute the most evident factor, but not the cause, the description of the mechanism of development of this problem in adolescence instead demonstrates the need for greater attention to the changes underway in social interaction.

The crucial role of social interaction, which in Italy tends to be stronger in the Central-Southern regions than in the North, is demonstrated by the higher frequency of suicidal thoughts among adolescents in the northern regions; while the higher risk of suicidal behavior in adolescents with a migrant background is explained not only by the challenges of acculturation, but also often by the presence of disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions, which also constitute a limit to integration. Similarly, the protective role of religious belief connects to the community spirit and social support networks that characterize religious participation.

More rarefied or formal social relationships, or perceived as having a lower qualitative intensity, are precisely determining factors in suicidal thinking even in the case of high school students, who – apart from academic performance expectations – are also starting to experiment in Italy with relational models similar to those in Northern Europe, with parents with a high cultural status who are less present and who delegate the care of their children more to professionals.

Finally, the fact that girls develop more suicidal thoughts than their male peers is motivated by the influence of social gender norms and the pressure of aesthetic models that compromise body satisfaction, self-esteem, the frequency and intensity of primary emotions. negative.

Considering the serious impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent increasingly transposition of social interaction on the virtual level on the mental health of adolescents, the study by the MUSA group of the CNR highlights the urgent need for targeted and contextualized interventions, and the central and crucial role of the school in supporting youth relational well-being.

More expert interventions should be urgently activated, in particular starting from primary schools, with the involvement of teachers and parents, on the subject of hyperconnection, deviance and relational violence, emotional education, self-esteem and with the aim of deconstructing symbolisms and social conditioning that stereotype and hierarchise the human environment, starting from gender asymmetries. These are all problems that substantially deteriorate the quality of life of today’s adolescents.