Suicidal ideation or self-injurious behaviors in Mexican school-aged adolescents Suicidal ideation or self-injurious behaviors in Mexican school-aged adolescents

Abstract

The aim of the study was to analyze predictive psychosocial indicators for suicidal ideation and self-injurious behavior in school-aged adolescents. Mexican families with adolescent children have changed their roles according to the economic and labor context, impacting the communicative processes among their members with variability of family psycho-affective independence. Adolescents have difficulties in emotional regulation with uncertainty, generating thoughts of ineffectiveness in the face of environmental adversities and school demands. The increase in the prevalence of depression and anxiety among young people has been relevant according to global and local organizations with records in health care systems with the increase in completed suicides in Mexico. The literature includes different predictive factors for suicidal ideation or self-injurious behavior without simultaneous analysis, therefore, this work sought to establish a comprehensive predictive model to analyze the predictive strength for suicidal ideation and for self-injurious behavior considering family functioning, emotional regulation, hopelessness, anxiety, and depressive mood. in schooled adolescents in Ciudad Juárez Chihuahua Mexico. With a quantitative, cross-sectional, non-experimental perspective with an empirical analytical approach, predictive strength values identified through an unweighted least squares trajectory analysis of structural equations. A sociodemographic questionnaire and seven instruments validated in 835 adolescents in school used through intentional non-probabilistic sampling with informed consent and assent between 2021 and 2022. Optimal adjustments of the predictive model and acceptable reliability observed in the seven instruments and a model proposed with distal factors such as family functioning and emotional regulation, intermediate factors such as hopelessness and proximal factors such as anxiety and depression. It found that the distal and intermediate variables contributed to the prediction of both phenomena, but that the proximal ones differentiated the contribution of depression with suicidal ideation and anxiety with self-injurious behavior. It concluded that family functioning promotes the development of emotional regulation, which, in turn, is associated with the appearance of hopelessness when there are emotional crises in adolescents. When hopelessness is associated with depression, the probability of presenting suicidal ideation increases, while if hopelessness is associated with anxiety, the probability of presenting self-injurious behavior without suicidal ideation increases.