Resilience to suicidal behaviour in young adults: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Despite decades of research on suicide risk factors in young people, there has been no signifcant improvement in our understanding of this phenomenon. This study adopts a positive deviance approach to identify individuals with suicide resilience and to describe their associated psychological and sociodemographic profles. Australian young adults aged 18–25 years with suicidal thoughts (N= 557) completed an online survey covering sociodemographic, mental health status, emotion regulatory and suicide-related domains. Latent class analysis was used to identify the individuals with suicide resilience. The predictors of suicide resilience were assessed using logistic regression models. The results suggested that one in ten (n= 55) met the criteria for suicide resilience. Factors that had a signifcant association with suicide resilience included greater cognitive fexibility, greater self-efcacy in expressing positive afect, reduced use of digital technology and less self-harm and substance use as a response to emotional distress. This study identifed the factors that may protect young adults with suicidal thoughts from progressing to suicide attempts. Suicide prevention programs might be optimised by shifting from a defcit-based to a strength-based approach through promoting cognitive fexibility, self-efcacy and reducing maladaptive coping Show more