Cognitive and Socioenvironmental Factors Associated with Suicide Ideation in Adolescents

Existing research on adolescent suicide risk has focused on homogenous cognitive and psychiatric risk factors and not as much on socioenvironmental factors. Data are also lacking for adolescents in rural communities who may experience different risk and protective factors than youth in urban areas. The current study examined multiple cognitive and socioenvironmental factors and their association with current suicide ideation severity in a sample of adolescents. The sample included 458 adolescents (50.8% female; ages 14–18; mean age = 15.64) recruited from public high schools in rural and under-resourced communities. Self-report measures were administered assessing suicide ideation, cognitive factors (defeat, entrapment, grit, self-efficacy), and socioenvironmental factors (SES, social support, food insecurity, lapses in medical care, and firearm access). All factors were significantly correlated with suicide ideation in expected directions using bi-variate correlations, except for access to firearms. However, in multivariate analyses, defeat and entrapment showed the strongest associations with suicide ideation, and food insecurity was the only other significant variable. Overall, defeat and entrapment demonstrated the strongest positive association with current suicide ideation severity in bi-variate and multi-variate analyses. These findings underscore how defeat, entrapment, and food insecurity are salient risk factors for suicide ideation in adolescents from rural areas and seem to be more impactful than other cognitive and environmental factors.