Risk factors for suicide attempts in the total population of Faroese eighth graders

Objectives: Suicide is still one of the leading causes of youth mortality, and amongst others previous suicide attempts have been found to be one of the strongest risk factors for suicide. The objective of this study is to examine risk factors of suicide attempts in a total population of Faroese adolescents. It is expected that anxious attachment, high scores on negative affectivity and low scores on past and present social support were correlated to an increased risk of life-time suicideattempts in both female and male adolescents. Method: Analyses were conducted based on data from The Faroese Adolescent Trauma Study, a self-report questionnaire survey including a total population of Faroese eighth graders (N = 687; 85 % response rate, mean age 14.2 years, SD = 2.1). The questionnaire included The Revised Adult Attachment Scale (RAAS), The Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC), and TheCrisis Support Scale (CSS). Results: In the total population 9.9 % (N = 68) of the participants reported life-time suicide attempt; of those 28 % were boys and 72 % were girls. In line with the expectations, the initial comparison showed that adolescents reporting life-time suicide attempt had significantly higher scores on attachment anxiety and negative affectivity, and had significantly lowerscores on attachment closeness, and both past and present social support. Further analyses stratified on gender, however, revealed unexpected results, as a high score on negative affectivity only was a significant risk factor for life-time suicide attempt among the girls, and high score on attachment closeness only was a significant protective factor of life-time suicide attempt among the boys.Conclusions: This study provides important data about the role of attachment, negative affectivity, and social support in suicide attempts in a total population of Faroese adolescents. Moreover the results show the necessity of taking gender into account in research of risk and protective factors of suicide attempts, and when establishing arrangements to prevent and treat suicide attempts in adolescents.