(PS5-100) U.S. Beliefs about the Warning Signs of Adolescent Male Suicide

Abstract Text: Suicide is a leading cause of mortality for adolescent males in the United States (CDC, 2024). According to suicide-scripts theory (Canetto, 1997, 2021), norms of gender and suicidality, including gendered beliefs about warning signs, contribute to culture- and age- specific female and male suicidality-patterns (Canetto & Sakinofsky, 1998). Documenting a community’s suicide beliefs is an essential step in effective suicide prevention (Canetto, 2021).
Understanding the warning signs of suicide has been an ongoing endeavor in suicide research and prevention (Rudd et al., 2006). A limitation of past research of warning signs is that it has not attended to the specificity of warning signs, depending, for example, on the intersection of sex, age and culture.

An important step in developing a culture-and-gender-norms-grounded science of suicide warning-signs is to documents what people believe are the warning signs for specific suicide-prone groups. Building on the method of a study of Nepali beliefs about suicide warning signs (Canetto et al., 2023), this study examined U.S. beliefs about the warning signs of adolescent male suicide. Participants (N=279; 50.2% “White”, Mage= 19.9 years, 49.8% female) in a Mountain West community with high White-male suicide rates completed a survey assessing beliefs about adolescent-male suicide warning-signs (i.e., “In my community most people believe that common warning signs of suicide in adolescent … males (for example, behaviors suggesting that he is considering killing himself) are:___”; “My personal position about this belief is that I: (Strongly Disagree; Disagree; Neutral; Agree; Strongly Agree)”; “I hold this position because__”). Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic-analysis method was used to organize the responses into themes.

Commonly reported community beliefs were that social withdrawal, depression, aggression, talking about suicide, a history of suicidality, behavioral changes, and mood swings are warning signs of adolescent male suicide. As an example of behavioral changes, a respondent said “all people that ive [sic] seen kill themselves … had a huge personality change.” Beliefs varied by respondents’ sex and history of suicidality. Male respondents were more likely to report the view that depression and giving away possessions are warning signs for adolescent males. Individuals with personal history of suicidality were more likely to report the view that talking about suicide is a warning sign. Many participants reported the belief that adolescent males do not give warning signs. As one participant said, “A lot of the time with boys, they try to hide how they feel...it can be difficult to … see warning signs with young males.” Most participants (74.2%) agreed or strongly agreed with the community beliefs that they reported.

This study’s findings point to the potential role of information about suicide beliefs in suicide prevention. Independent of their veracity, beliefs about suicide warning signs likely influence professional, family, and friend responses to suicidal individuals. This study’s findings give clues to how beliefs about adolescent male suicide may contribute to barriers to the identification of its warning signs and its prevention.