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Assessing Health-Risk Behaviors and their Associations with Suicidal Ideation in Adolescents within the U.S

March 21, 2024
by Ethan Wu

Abstract: Suicide is a widely increasing issue across the United States, particularly in adolescents due to the hormonal change that occur at their age (1). However, most research centered around suicide have focused on the adult population. This brings in an important issue of how suicide interacts with adolescents. The YRBS data set was used to gather data on adolescent suicidal behavior and their health risk behaviors. There were three questions in the survey that had suicidal information, and the user input for these questions, each participant was categorized into 1 of 6 increasing categories of suicidal ideation. Chi-square tests of independence were used to select risk factors from the data set to add into the final regression model. A separate model was created for location, and odds ratios from the model showed that every borough sampled in New York City were 18 times less likely to have higher levels of suicidal ideation compared to other locations sampled. For the health-risk behaviors, once again odds ratios were calculated from the coefficients of the ordinal regression model. The risk factors with strong positive associations with suicidal ideation were forced sexual intercourse, followed by bullying and cyber bullying. On the other hand, risk factors with strong negative associations were getting 8 hours of sleep, eating breakfast everyday, and staying physically active everyday. The implications of the findings give future researchers clear questions to investigate to battle suicide in a largely neglected population.

 

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