Language: Spanish
References: 58
Page: 59-67
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ABSTRACT
The understanding of child suicide has achieved more and more specific notions since it started to be studied from the theory of adult suicide. Now, the implication of certain factors such as the evolution of death conceptualization, the desire of joining an absent significant person, the premeditation of the suicidal act, the involvement of family environment as a contributing or protective factor, or a previous mistreatment experience, has become clearly recognized.
Suicides which occur during the childhood period have been associated to previous sexual-nature abuse experiences. In adult suicides, the presence of some kind of mistreatment during their childhood period has also been found. Both phenomena, mistreatment and child suicide, are usually under-registered because of the variability of their defining approaches or because of some cultural influences such as violence occurring naturally or negation of child suicide or premeditation.
It is postulated that the mechanics of child mistreatment traps the abuser into a dynamics based on the inequality of physical, intellectual and/or moral conditions; this reality plus the defenseless nature of children, impedes the termination of that situation unless it finishes by means of another violent act such, as a suicide. Furthermore, the consequences suffered by a child victim of mistreatment can become contributing factors for a suicidal behavior consummation. Consequently, dysfunctions or disturbances on cognitive, psychological, identity, belonging or hopelessness state of the victim, as well as the emotional pain caused by the mistreatment may favor a suicide behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the presence of any given type of child mistreatment in children (since eight to 14 years old) that incurred in a suicide in the State of Guanajuato between 1995 and 2001.
The methodology used for this descriptive, observational, retrospective and transversal study, was ex-post-facto (after the event), since the technique for data gathering was carried out by psychological autopsy. This technique facilitates an access into the families and to the understanding of their dynamics, and also to recognizing the circumstances prior to the decease. This technique included one or several interviews with people close to deceased child, besides a detailed analysis of the suicidal event and of all the deceased child’s residual belongings (suicide notes in this case). This study searched some direct and indirect indicators of a possible child mistreatment suffered by suicidal children. The psychological autopsy was conformed by a Questionnaire of Psychosocial data, a Suicidal Act Evaluation Questionnaire and by an Informant’s Reliability Scale. Because of the lack of specific backgrounds for the cases of child suicide, the Psychological Questionnaire was specifically developed for this study.
Studied cases were those belonging to child suicides, up to 14-year-old children, who consummated their death in the State of Guanajuato in the 1995 to 2001 period. The files were obtained by the General Attorney Department. With the information extracted from such files, we proceeded to establish phone and mail contact with relatives of the deceased children. Later on, some interviews were carried out with one or more people close to each child; these interviews were held by psychologists qualified in Psychological Autopsy and Emotional Contention Techniques.
The examined data came basically from the Psycho-Social Questionnaire and from the Content Analysis of suicide notes. The analysis method for first data, of quantitative nature, was by frequency distribution and correlation, computed by SPSS statistical software. Qualitative data resulting from the analysis of suicide notes content were verified by a technical jury integrated by three participating clinical psychologists.
Results: Twenty nine suicide cases were analyzed, representing 69% of child suicides up to 14-year-old children in the State of Guanajuato within the aforementioned period. The rest of the files were not included in this research because the impossibility for locating the victim’s relatives due to changes of residence, and in a lower percentage because they refused to participate in the study due to the emotional pain of talking about the suicide event, or because they ignored the minor child’s data regarding the circumstances and causes of his death.
Of all the examined cases, 19 (65.5%) were men and 10 (34.5%) were women. The range of child suicides’ age was from eight to 14 years old, with a 12.55 year-old average and a 1.62 year-old standard deviation. Five suicide notes were analyzed, which belonged to 4 children: 3 girls (one of them left two notes) and one boy. With respect to 72.4% of the cases, the interviewed persons were first-degree relatives and regarding the remaining percentage, they were cousins, uncles or grandparents who reported having had a close relationship with the deceased child. The average age of the interviewees was 43 years, with a standard deviation age of 17.19 years.
In almost half of the suicides (51.7%) some kind of violence was suffered. According to the interviewees’ statements, 31% of the children who committed suicide had suffered some kind of psychological mistreatment, 41.1% of them had received some of kind of physical mistreatment, 3.4% were victims of sexual abuse and 10.34% were neglected. Almost a quarter of all the children had suffered two or three kinds of mistreatment. Additionally, 41.4% of suicidal children had seen physical violence at home. Four of the suicide notes included explicit declarations of mistreatment experiences.
Other variables that were found were the presence of previous suicide attempts in 20.7% of the cases; and a 26.3% of cases where a relative also had a previous suicide attempt. Family alcohol consumption was detected in 65.5% and drug consumption in 24% of the cases. Further analysis show a correlation between child previous suicide attempts and psychological mistreatment (p= 0.004) or any other kind of violence exposure (p= 0.015). It is concluded that an important percentage of children who incurred in a suicide were indeed victims of some kind of child mistreatment, of which physical one was particularly evident. However, neither physical nor sexual abuse can be separated from their implicit component: the emotional mistreatment. Studies of pure qualitative nature could contribute with more information about the dynamics that associates both phenomena. It is deemed that child mistreatment prevention would directly impact both suicide occurrence for the same group of age, and probably also within adult populations thus reducing its prevalence.
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