Preliminary Reporting Patterns of Suicide Ideation and Attempt Among Native American Adolescents in Two Samples

ABSTRACT

Objective

Native American adolescents are disproportionately burdened by suicidality. Here, we examine patterns of reporting of suicide ideation and suicide attempt among Native American youth compared to those from other ethnoracial backgrounds, as this data is important for grounding commonly subscribed to frameworks of suicide risk (e.g., ideation-to-action).

Method

Data are from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (N = 54,243; grades 9–12; 51.0% female) and Minnesota Student Survey (N = 335,151; grades 8, 9, 11; 50.7% female). Comparing Native American youth to peers from other ethnoracial backgrounds, we examined two suicide reporting patterns: 1) odds of reporting suicide attempt among those who reported ideation and 2) odds of reporting suicide ideation among those who reported an attempt.

Results

Across both samples, when reporting suicide ideation, youth from other ethnoracial backgrounds were 20–55% less likely than Native American youth to also report attempt. While few consistent differences were observed between Native American youth and those from other racial minority backgrounds in patterns of co-reporting suicide ideation and attempt across samples, White youth were between 37% and 63% less likely than Native American youth to report a suicide attempt without also reporting ideation.

Conclusions

The increased odds of engaging in a suicide attempt with or without reporting ideation question the generalizability of widely held frameworks of suicide risk to Native American youth and have important implications for suicide risk monitoring. Future research is needed to illuminate how these behaviors unfold over time and the potential mechanisms of risk for engaging in suicide attempts in this disproportionately burdened group.

Abbreviations: YRBSS: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey; MSS: Minnesota Student Survey

Acknowledgments

We honor the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ and Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ (authors at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities) and the Occhaneechi, Lumbee, Coharie, Haliwa-Saponi, Eastern Band of Cherokee, Meherrin, Tuscarora, Sappony and Waccamaw-Siouan Nations (author at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), the Original Peoples of the lands on which we live and work. This acknowledgement is a small piece of the larger goal to disrupt colonialism and Indigenous erasure and restore Indigenous Peoples to their lands.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2023.2222408.

Notes

¹ We note that the terms Native American, Native, American Indian, Alaska Native, First Nations, Original Peoples, and Indigenous may represent overlapping and non-overlapping groups and that it is best practice to use the terminology that individuals and communities prefer. Here, Native American and Native refer to those who self-identify as American Indian or Alaska Native and who likely demonstrate varying relationships (e.g., enrollment status) to heterogeneous Tribal Nations (e.g., federally, state, and non-recognized). We have opted against using the term “American Indian and Alaska Native” as this term has a particular legal designation in the U.S. which implies citizenship in a federally recognized Tribe or Village and thus may be under-inclusive for our sample.

² We acknowledge that discussions about language use and racial/ethnic identity are fluid and evolving, and that intentionality behind language use is incredibly important in scholarly work. Notably, some individuals and organizations have encouraged the use of “white” (as opposed to “White”) given the ambiguity of white racial identity and the potential for unintentionally signaling white supremacist ideology. Conversely, some scholars argue that using “white” positions whiteness as a default and reinforces white supremacist ideology. In this manuscript, we capitalize White to be consistent with APA style.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [R01MH107479-03S1]; National Science Foundation [Graduate Research Fellowship Program].