The context of suicide: An examination of life circumstances thought to be understandable precursors to youth suicide

Abstract

Background: Despite the considerable increase in youth suicide across nations, attitudinal measures continue to adopt a unidimensional perspective, presenting suicide as a behaviour that is either understandable or not. Thus, existing measures fail to consider the context and details of those situations where suicide may be seen as a viable option to a youth population.

Aims: It is this paucity of research we address by presenting a new, context-based measure on the circumstantial justification of suicide.

Method: Events seen to precede suicidal behaviour fall into four categories; (a) interpersonal difficulty, (b) illness, (c) familial disruption and (d) loss. The inclusion of items in the pilot version reflects each of these themes. Participants for the development of the measure came from a convenience sample of 100 undergraduate Psychology students (42 males and 58 females) ranging in age from 18 to 42 years (M = 21.13, SD = 5.37).

Results: The final version of the proposed “Trinity Inventory of Precursors to Suicide” consists of 12 items, loading on to four scales. Initial psychometric analyses are positive, with each of the scales having high reliability.

Conclusions: We conclude that this measure holds possibilities for prevention programmes and will be a useful inclusion in future research.

Declaration of interest: We would like to acknowledge a National Children's Strategy Doctoral Fellowship which contributed funding to this research.

• Adolescence
• suicide
• attitudes