Journal of Adolescent Health (2009) 335-341

Schilling, E. A., Aseltine, R. H., Glanovsky, J. L., James, A., & Jacobs, D. (2009). Adolescent Alcohol Use, Suicidal Ideation, and Suicide Attempts. Journal of Adolescent Health, 44(4), 335-341. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.08.006

Summary

The rationale of the reviewed article is to examine the association between self-reported alcohol use and suicide attempts amongst youngsters who did and did not account suicidal ideation during the past year. 2 types of alcohol use were reviewed: heavy episodic drinking and also drinking while down. There was regression of Self-reported suicide attempts on suicidal ideation and both procedures of alcohol use, controlling for participants' levels of depressive symptoms, and demographic characteristics. Logistic regression analyses showed that both heavy episodic drinking and drinking while down were considerably associated with self-reported suicide attempts. Analyses examining the conditional association of alcohol use and suicidal ideation with self-reported suicide attempts exposed that drinking while down was associated with extensively greater risk of suicide attempt among those not reporting suicidal ideation in the past year.

Critical Evaluation

Even though present data are somewhat precise on the prevalence of adolescent suicidality, depression, and alcohol use, only tentative conclusions can be taken as earlier research has been loaded with methodological problems, generalizeability constraints, and mixed conclusions. On the basis of these restrictions, the result from the majority of the reviewed studies can be considered evocative rather than assenting. The foremost criticism of a lot of the present literature integrated in this review is the utilization of diverse methods or appraisal tools with diverse trustworthiness and legitimacy. Comparing outcome across studies was intricate and probably improper since there was no single measure or steady definitions of suicidality, depression.  For instance, while depression may be acknowledged as a sole clinical identification or as an indicator, rates of depression be different in accordance with type of measure utilized or how depression is defined. Consequently, using the term "depression" to represent each one of these definitions is deceptive and an incorrect depiction of what the youngster may be experiencing. The cross-sectional studies were forbidden from creation any causal statements about the sequential relationship among suicidality, depression, and alcohol utilization. One more criticism was that a number of the longitudinal studies compared data over a short period of time, of not more than 2 years, that cannot explicate the effects of maturation which may influence the result of the studies. The utilization of clinical samples restricts the generalizability of the outcomes to the common population. This deficiency on the basis of theory research fails to develop or enhance our capability to check teenager suicidality in a defined scientific milieu. A methodological constraint of the greater part of the studies was the special use of self-report data, particularly on things that were susceptible in nature. It is hard to recognize the level to which the reports were perfect images of the variables being analyzed or an outcome of being suicidal, depressed, and/or an alcohol user.  To date, there is merely narrow data available, with conclusion that are frequently indecisive, concerning an independent impact of ethnicity on the 3 youngster phenomena of suicidality, depression, and alcohol use.

JUST 300 WORDS PAPER.