City Research Online

Abstract

Objective: Adolescent suicidality is a major public and mental health crisis. Youths contemplating suicide experience internal conflicts between wanting to die and live. The present study examined reasons suicidal adolescents want to live, using their own words, to develop a nuanced understanding of their individual perspectives and experiences.

Methods: Between January and December 2023, adolescent patients hospitalized for suicidality identified three reasons for living (RFL) as part of safety planning, in the context of standard clinical care. RFL were qualitatively analyzed using corpus-driven language analysis to determine the most frequently occurring words in the dataset and identify word-based patterns and contextual factors that outline what matters to adolescents.

Results: Participants included 211 adolescent patients; 97% identified three RFL. The corpus of 1,914 individual words comprised 494 unique word types. Analysis of the most common words (i.e., my, family, friends, want, future, mom, be, life, sister, go), along with the 10 most common nouns, adjectives, and verbs, offered insights into adolescents’ sense of belonging and purpose, and reinforced the importance of relationships, hobbies, ambitions, and responsibilities for adolescents. Individual words, frequencies, structures, and indicative examples are provided.

Conclusions: RFL provide insight into what is important in the lives of suicidal adolescents. Thus, RFL may serve as a protective factor and help reduce suicidality. Additionally, RFL can feasibly be used therapeutically to build rapport, establish therapy goals, and personalize evidence-based treatments.

Publication Type:	Article
Publisher Keywords:	suicidality; suicidal ideation; suicide attempt; adolescent; mental health; corpus linguistics; reasons for living; inpatient hospitalization; depression
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Nursing
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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