Original articleProtective Factors and Suicide Risk in Adolescents with a History of Sexual Abuse
Section snippets
Methods
The 2004 Minnesota Student Survey (MSS) data were used for this study. This statewide survey assesses a wide variety of health behaviors and related factors in students enrolled in the 6th, 9th, and 12th grades every 3 years. Surveys were administered in schools during class time; no identifying information was collected. Passive parental consent procedures were used in most districts; active parental consent was used when required by school or district research protocols. The University of
Characteristics of the Sample
In the whole sample, 93.1% of students reported no history of sexual abuse, including 96.0% of male students and 90.3% of female students. Four percent of students reported sexual abuse by a non-family member, 1.3% by a family member, and 1.4% by both a family and non-family perpetrator. Demographic characteristics differed significantly across sexual abuse categories (Table I).
Across the sample, 24.5% of male and 34.1% of female students reported thinking about suicide, and 7.4% of male and
Discussion
Results suggest that specific protective effects operate in the lives of young people who are at increased risk for suicide attempt because of a history of sexual abuse. Family connectedness, teacher caring, other adult caring, and school safety were associated with lower levels of suicidal ideation and attempts for both male and female adolescents. Family connectedness appeared to have a particularly strong protective association with the outcomes. This finding suggests that if levels of
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2021, Children and Youth Services ReviewCitation Excerpt :Evidence suggests that relationships with adults at school represent an important protective factor against suicidality for many youth (Borowsky et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2007; Marraccini & Brier, 2017), including high-risk groups such as lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents (Eisenberg & Resnick, 2006; Taliaferro & Muehlenkamp, 2017). However, the buffering effect of the school environment in the context of ACEs remains understudied (Eisenberg et al., 2007), and studies examining ACE and suicidality in large non clinical samples either aggregate racial/ethnic groups or do not address racial/ethnic differences in these associations. In a prior study that used MSS data, Forster et al. (2020) found that school/ teacher connections were not universally protective for suicidality for adolescents with a history of ACEs.
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Supported by the Prevention Research Centers Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cooperative Agreement Number 1-U48-DP-000063). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.