Injurious Suicide Attempts Among Middle and High Schhol Students

Abstract

Injurious Suicide Attempts Among Middle and High School Students: Association with Sexual Dating Violence and Substance Use Christian Nwabueze, Hilary Elom Introduction: Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among the teenage population. Substance use and sexual dating violence is also common among this group. Aim: To determine the association between sexual dating violence, substance use and the risk of injurious suicide attempts. Methods: The data consists of a nationally representative sample of 15, 624 Middle and High School students in the 2015, Youth Behavioral Risk Surveillance System Survey. Majority of the respondents were aged 13 to 17 years. Results: There were 7757 (50.03%) females and 7749 (49.97%) males. There were 8666 (66.3%) and Blacks and Asians were 14.87% and 5.63% respectively. A total of 1072 (9.87%) had attempted injurious suicide in the past year (females=68.1%, males =31.91%). About 10% had experienced sexual violence within the last year. The proportion attempted suicides who were illegal drugs users, current alcohol, tobacco and marijuana users were 9.14%, 8.87%, 9.08%, 9.36% respectively. Those who did not experience sexual dating violence had a higher odd (OR=1.81, CI = 1.497 – 2.188, P = \u3c0.0001) of injurious suicide than those who did not date at all. Abstinence from smoking, alcohol, marijuana and illegal drug use (OR = 0.396, CI = 0.341 – 0.459, p = \u3c0.0001) in the past month was significantly associated with reduced risk for injurious suicide attempts. Conclusion: Abstinence from substance use reduces the risk for injurious suicide attempts among middle and high school students. Sexual dating violence seems to be a significant risk factor for injurious suicide attempts in this group. Key words: suicide, sexual violence, substance use, abstinenc