Familial Pathways to Early-Onset Suicidal Behavior: Familial and Individual Antecedents of Suicidal Behavior

In a prospective study of offspring of parents with mood disorders, 364 offspring (average age 20 years) of 203 parents were followed for up to 6 years. Offspring with incident suicide attempts or emergency referrals for suicide ideation or behaviour were compared with offspring without such events. Multivariates analyses were conducted to examine predictors of incident events & predictors to time to incident event. Offspring of probands who had made suicide attempts, compared with offspring of parents with mood disorders who had not made attempts, had a higher rate of incident suicide attempts as well as overall suicidal events. Mood disorder & self-reported impulsive aggression in offspring & a history of sexual abuse & self-reported depression in parents predicted earlier time to, & greater hazard of, an incident suicidal event. (40 refs.)