This longitudinal study made use of survival analyses to examine predictors of time-to-suicide attempt for a high risk group of adolescents who were psychiatrically hospitalized and suicidal at the beginning of the study. We found that these adolescents were about twice as likely to make a suicide attempt over the course of the 1-year post-hospitalization period if they had at least one biological parent with a history of a mental health problem. Further, although the cumulative incidence of suicide attempt was higher for adolescents who had previously made multiple previous attempts, and suicidal ideation and functional impairment were also significant predictors of suicide attempts, adjustment for these variables in a multivariate model had little impact on the predictive power of parental mental health problems. Risk factors were more additive in their impact and consistent with a family systems model, highlighting the importance of assessing and targeting adolescent and parental contributors to risk in treatments with high risk youth. These findings also point to the possible importance of these risk factors as targets for preventive interventions. Future interventions and treatment models need to incorporate a greater emphasis on parental contributors in order to more effectively reduce suicide risk among adolescents.
