Understanding social risk factors in chilean adolescent suicides: An analysis of mediating mechanisms

Child and adolescent suicide is a major public health issue in Chile. Although we have seen a decline in child and adolescent suicide statistics over the past few years, suicide is still the leading cause of death in adolescents between 15 and 19 years of age. Suicidal ideation is an important factor in the prevention and early intervention of suicide. However, this factor has great variability, dependent on territory, rurality, gender, and social status in Chilean adolescents. Owing to this distinct inequality, this chapter addresses important questions regarding the effect of social context on the mental health of adolescents and the mediating mechanisms that explain the relationship between a certain social context and suicidal behavior. To address these questions, the chapter describes risk and protection variables in a Chilean context, which are theoretically and empirically grounded, and which shed light on the relationship between context and extreme psychological distress. This chapter identifies findings regarding the relationship between suicidal behavior and sociodemographic variables like rurality, economic vulnerability and gender, among others. Furthermore, this chapter considers related studies that focus on the effects of psychosocial variables such as family functionality, alcohol consumption, drug use, with a clear focus on the construct of social defeat. Finally, this chapter identifies and describes clinical predictors of suicidal behavior. The results of a study completed on an adolescent Chilean population that identifies risk trajectories through the analysis of mediation are discussed in this chapter. These results demonstrate that risk trajectories begin with the contextual, pass through the psychosocial and clinical variables, and finally increase the probability of experiencing suicidal behavior.