The role of exposure to suicide and coping strategies in the suicidal ideation of adolescents

[摘要] English: Both international and national research, indicate that adolescent suicide rates have steadily increased during the past few decades. As a result, the importance of investigations concerning risk and protective factors that influence adolescents is highlighted. The current study investigates the role of one such potential risk factor, namely exposure to suicide, as well as the role of coping strategies as possible protective factors in the levels of suicidal ideation of adolescents. A non-experimental research design, including both correlational and criterion group components was implemented. The group of participants consisted of 590 grade 11 and 12 adolescents from the Northern Cape Province. The measuring instruments included the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (Reynolds, 1988), a self-compiled biographical questionnaire, the Coping Orientations to the Problems Experienced Questionnaire (COPE) (Carver, Scheier & Weintraub, 1989), and a self-compiled Guttman-scale containing two items to establish whether participants had been exposed to suicidal behaviour. A product moment correlation was calculated between exposure to suicidal behaviour and suicidal ideation. This was followed by a multivariate analysis of variance to determine whether significant differences existed between a group of participants with low levels of suicidal ideation, a group with high levels of suicidal ideation, and their use of different coping strategies. Results from the study indicate that the measuring instruments have acceptable internal consistency coefficients; however, the COPE questionnaire obtained lower alpha coefficient scores than the alpha coefficients found for an American sample (Carver, Scheier & Weintraub, 1989). No significant correlational relation was found between exposure to suicide and levels of suicidal ideation. The univariate analysis of variance revealed that this group of participants most frequently made use of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies, however, the results also indicate that the participants, especially those portraying high levels of suicidal ideation, frequently use less functional strategies, such as denial and behavioural disengagement. Thus, it seems as if adolescents with high suicidal ideation more often engage in inappropriate coping strategies, such as denial and behavioural disengagement. Similarly, Lewis and Frydenberg (2002) found that adolescents tend to move toward suicidal behaviour when they have inadequate abilities to implement efficient coping strategies. In the light of these findings, adolescents would certainly benefit from intervention programmes that urge the development and use of more effective coping strategies.

[发布机构] University of the Free State