Newsroom
Recent rise in suicide rates among children and adolescents has made prevention a major focus of government agencies and mental health organizations
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — A new paper by experts at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, and Old Dominion University makes the case for an increased focus on earlier developmental points of the pathway to suicide amid a recent rise in suicide rates among children and adolescents.
The authors note that over the past decade, the research community has made important advances in understanding the development of self-injurious thoughts and behavior and effective interventions. Even so, there are still major gaps of knowledge in our understanding of how to prevent suicide, they write.
“Our paper emphasizes that developmental pathways to self-injury and suicide develop early in a child’s life, which makes it critical to better understand those pathways and associated risk factors,” said Caroline Oppenheimer, Ph.D., a research public health analyst at RTI and lead author of the paper. “In recent years, the research community has been narrowly focused on the transition from suicidal thoughts to suicidal behavior. While important, this framework lacks a developmental psychopathology perspective, which is key to understanding how self-injurious thoughts and behavior develop in youth, specifically.”
The authors present four core principles of developmental psychopathology that should inform future research:
• Any given behavior ranges from typical to atypical
• Expression of and risk for psychopathology may change across developmental phases
• Behavior dynamically moves along a continuum across a person’s lifespan
• Early intervention and prevention is most effective
The paper, published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, concludes by asserting that a developmental psychopathology framework could pave the way for more targeted and tailored preventive interventions.
