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ViewAttendees 6

Symposia

Suicide and Self-Injury

Session: Longitudinal Predictors of Self-injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Among Clinical Populations Across the Lifespan

3 - (SYM 39) Examining the Impact of Sexual and Gender Minority Identity on the Association Between Interpersonal Stress and Suicide Ideation in Youth

Friday, November 17, 2023
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM PST
Location: Skykomish (604), Level 6
Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents, with even higher rates of reported suicide ideation (SI). The prevalence of SI is even greater in youth identifying as a sexual or gender minority (SGM) compared to non-SGM peers. Interpersonal stress, including family and peer stress, has been shown to heighten risk for youth SI, and particularly for SGM youth. Most research to date relies heavily on retrospective reports over long follow-up periods (e.g., weeks, months), which may be vulnerable to report biases and limit development of more proximal suicide interventions. This study aims to: (1) compare SGM and non-SGM youth on factors influencing suicide risk and resiliency during a high-risk period (i.e., post-psychiatric hospitalization for a suicide crisis) and (2) explore the degree to which SGM identity moderates the relationship between day-level interpersonal stress and SI severity. Interpersonal stress severity was examined collectively across interpersonal domains and for family and peer stress, specifically. This study incorporates a multi-level approach including between-person data collected during a baseline assessment and within-person collected multiple times/daily via ecological momentary assessment for 28-days. Descriptive and multilevel model analyses were run in RStudio. Participants were 48 adolescents (Mage = 14.96, SD = 1.6; 77% White, 60% SGM), recruited following acute psychiatric care for suicide risk as part of a larger study. Relative to non-SGM youth, SGM youth reported a greater likelihood of having been bullied at school in their lifetime (OR = 4.87, p = .036). Over follow-up, there was a significant main effect between groups, such that SGM youth reported a weaker desire to live in the context of broad interpersonal stress (B = 0.80, p = .034), family stress (B = 0.88, p = .037), and peer stress (B = 1.17, p = .022). Further, there was a significant main effect within-person such that only more severe family stress was associated with increased same-day desire to die (B = 0.39, p = .027) across all youth. Notably, SGM identity did not moderate the relationship between daily interpersonal stress and SI severity (ps > .159). These findings extend prior research in two ways: (1) demonstrating a between-person impact of youth’s SGM identity on daily desire to live and (2) identifying days of relatively more intense family stress, specifically, are associated with increased desire to die during a particularly high-risk period for adolescent suicide.