The present study examines parental history of mental health problems in addition to adolescent factors, such as psychopathology, adaptive impairment, severity of suicidal ideation, and history of multiple suicide attempts, as predictors of suicide attempts in high risk adolescents. The study’s conceptual framework is a developmental psychopathology model that conceptualizes adolescent suicidal behavior and related psychopathology as conditions that unfold over time (King 1997). Adolescence is characterized by specific developmental tasks (i.e., increasing independence), role requirements (i.e., student), and social contexts (i.e., family life). It is also a period characterized by increased prevalence rates for alcohol use and depressive disorders, two primary risk factors for suicide attempts (Gould et al. 2003). Making use of a transactional model of development (Sameroff and Chandler 1975) that considers multiple influences across time, it is possible to put the magnifying glass on a particular behavioral outcome. In this study, survival analyses are used to construct models that predict the time-to-suicide attempt in a large sample of acutely suicidal recently hospitalized youth. These models use time-varying covariates to take into account changes in the contributions of predictor variables over time.
