African American Children's Reports of Depressed Mood, Hopelessness, and Suicidal Ideation and Later Suicide Attempts

This study attempted to assess whether family demographic characteristics and child aggressive behavior are equal to or better than child self-reported depressive symptoms in predicting suicidal behavior. Participants were a community population of African Americans first recruited at age 6 and followed periodically through age 19-20. Measures included child self-reports of depressed mood, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation, teacher reported child aggression in grades 4-6, 6 th grade caregiver report of family demographic characteristics, and the participants' report at age 19-20 of suicide attempts. Depressed mood proved the most consistent predictor of adolescent/young adult attempts in our logistic regression analyses of the data from the population as a whole and among females. The relationship between depressed mood and suicide attempts in males was in the expected direction, but was not statistically significant. Teacher-reported youth aggressive behavior did prove to be a significant predictor of attempts in 4 th and 5 th grade for the population as a whole, but not in our analyses by gender. The relationships between family demographic characteristics and attempts failed to reach statistical significance, but were, generally, in the expected direction. The study revealed that African American children's self-reports of depressed mood as early as grade 4 may prove useful in predicting adolescent/young adult suicide attempts, particularly among females. Neither family demographics nor teacher-reported child aggressive behavior proved equal to child self-reported depressive symptoms in predicting later suicide attempts.