Abstract

RUEDA-JAIMES, Germán Eduardo; RANGEL MARTINEZ-VILLALBA, Andrés Mauricio; CASTRO-RUEDA, Vanessa Alexandra  and  CAMACHO, Paul Anthony. Suicide Potential in Adolescents: A Comparison with Adult Population. rev.colomb.psiquiatr. [online]. 2010, vol.39, n.4, pp.683-692. ISSN 0034-7450.

Introduction: Suicide is the third leading cause of violent death in Colombian adolescents. In the last four decades of the twentieth century adolescent suicide rates increased in Colombia and in the world. There are few studies comparing the characteristics of suicidal adolescentpatients in Latin America. Objective: To determine the differences between suicidal adolescents and adults seen at the mental health services of a private clinic in Bucaramanga, Colombia.Methods: The sample consisted of all consecutive suicidal patients attending a clinic for psychiatric care. They all underwent a semistructured interview asking about demographic characteristics and major risk and protective factors for suicide. A logistic regression analysis was performed with adolescence as the dependent variable adjusted for confounding variables. Results: We interviewed 448 adults and 85 patients under 18. Adolescents had a mean age of 15.2±1.5 and adults 35.9 ± 13.6 years. Adolescents were more often female, had more suicide attempts (OR=3.64; 95%CI: 2.13-6.20), but less severe mental disorders (OR=0.42; 0.25-0.71). Conclusions: Colombian suicidal adolescents were more often female, with the highest percentage of suicide attempts, and with less severe mental health problems than adults.

Keywords : Suicide; attempted suicide; adolescents..

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