Home > A newly identified group of adolescents at "invisible" risk for psychopathology and suicidal behavior: findings from the SEYLE study.

Carli, Vladimir and Hoven, Christina W and Wasserman, Camilla and Chiesa, Flaminia and Guffanti, Guia and Sarchiapone, Marco and Apter, Alan and Balazs, Judit and Brunner, Romuald and Corcoran, Paul and Cosman, Doina and Haring, Christian and Iosuec, Miriam and Kaess, Michael and Kahn, Jean Pierre and Keeley, Helen and Postuvan, Vita and Saiz, Pilar and Varnik, Airi and Wasserman, Danuta (2014) A newly identified group of adolescents at "invisible" risk for psychopathology and suicidal behavior: findings from the SEYLE study. World Psychiatry, 13, (1), pp. 78-86. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Fwps.20088.

External website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC391802...

This study explored the prevalence of risk behaviors (excessive alcohol use, illegal drug use, heavy smoking, reduced sleep, overweight, underweight, sedentary behavior, high use of Internet/TV/videogames for reasons not related to school or work, and truancy), and their association with psychopathology and self-destructive behaviors, in a sample of 12,395 adolescents recruited in randomly selected schools across 11 European countries.

Latent class analysis identified three groups of adolescents: a low-risk group (57.8%) including pupils with low or very low frequency of risk behaviors; a high-risk group (13.2%) including pupils who scored high on all risk behaviors, and a third group ("invisible" risk, 29%) including pupils who were positive for high use of Internet/TV/videogames for reasons not related to school or work, sedentary behavior and reduced sleep. Pupils in the "invisible" risk group, compared with the high-risk group, had a similar prevalence of suicidal thoughts (42.2% vs. 44%), anxiety (8% vs. 9.2%), subthreshold depression (33.2% vs. 34%) and depression (13.4% vs. 14.7%).

The prevalence of suicide attempts was 5.9% in the "invisible" group, 10.1% in the high-risk group and 1.7% in the low-risk group. The prevalence of all risk behaviors increased with age and most of them were significantly more frequent among boys. Girls were significantly more likely to experience internalizing (emotional) psychiatric symptoms. The "invisible" group may represent an important new intervention target group for potentially reducing psychopathology and other untoward outcomes in adolescence, including suicidal behavior.


Item Type
Article
Publication Type
Irish-related, Open Access, Article
Drug Type
All substances
Intervention Type
Harm reduction, Screening / Assessment
Date
February 2014
Identification #
https://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Fwps.20088
Page Range
pp. 78-86
Publisher
World Psychiatric Association
Volume
13
Number
1
EndNote
Accession Number
HRB (Electronic Only)

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