Social Support, Coping and Suicidal Attempts among Homeless Adolescents
Soutien social, adaptation et tentatives de suicide chez les jeunes en situation d’itinérance
Résumé
Background: Homeless youth are a population at risk for suicidal behavior. Despite growing knowledge about risk factors, protective factors against suicidal behavior among this population are still poorly understood.
Aims: The main goal of this study is to explore differences in coping and social support between homeless adolescents who attempted suicide during the previous year and those who did not.
Methods: Seventy-six homeless adolescents (33 male and 43 female) from eight different shelters provided information about their suicidal behaviors over the previous year and filled out the Adolescent Coping Scale (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993b) and the Social Provision Scale (Cutrona & Russell, 1987).
Results: Analyses indicate that homeless adolescents who had not attempted suicide perceived more social support available in their network and especially that others can be counted upon for tangible assistance and guidance. Conversely, youth who had attempted suicide reported using more non-productive strategies of coping, such as tension reduction, keep to self, and self-blame. A hierarchical logistic regression model found that, controlling for the effect of gender, tangible assistance and tension reduction were significantly associated with suicidal attempts among homeless adolescents.
Conclusion: These results suggest that productive coping does not seem to constitute a sufficient personal resource to protect homeless adolescents from suicidal attempts. The use of non-productive coping such as trying to feel better by releasing tensions (yelling, crying, taking alcohol/drugs) could however be considered a serious risk factor in this population. Consequently, for the purposes of building resilience, promoting homeless youth’s ability to find environmental resources, especially tangible assistance from others, could be the most valuable approach.
Limits: Using a cross-sectional design precluded establishing causality. Furthermore, as most of these youth were not homeless for a long time, care should be taken in generalizing these results to adolescents with longer histories of homelessness.
Loading...