Sociocultural Processes in Latina Suicide Attempts

西班牙裔青少年女性的自杀企图率（五分之一）高于非西班牙裔青少年女性（十分之一），但人们对西班牙裔青少年女性的自杀企图、自杀前因以及为什么西班牙裔女孩比其他女孩更容易自杀知之甚少。虽然理论和临床公式的原因，这种现象已经出现在文献中，这些想法还没有受到实证审查。拟议的项目将采用定性方法，辅之以定量措施，利用包括生态发展系统理论在内的概念框架来审查这一现象。 本研究将（1）从女孩的角度探讨自杀企图的现象学（例如，（2）探讨父母对女儿自杀企图的理解（包括他们对先前危机事件和女儿动机的假设）;（3）检查将青少年拉丁裔自杀者及其父母与非自杀者及其父母区分开来的家庭，发展和社会文化经验。将招募100名企图自杀的拉丁裔青少年完成问卷调查。我们还将采访父母，以获得多个线人对自杀企图的看法。为了确保我们探索和确定的因素确实是独特的，而不是简单地代表大多数西班牙裔女孩和家庭共享的方面，我们还将采访一组匹配的100名西班牙裔非移民和他们的父母。将进行半结构化的深入访谈，以探讨自杀企图之前的心理，家庭和社会经历;为什么企图成为选择的反应;以及女孩如何理解或解释这些企图。对概念模型中所提出的社会文化和家庭因素的客观衡量将丰富定性数据。这种主位的，种族内的方法可以帮助解释为什么一些西班牙裔少女企图自杀，而其他人没有，并揭示了文化因素与其他因素的相互作用，相信会影响自杀企图。关键的研究目标是确定是否，以及如何，在文献中假设的解释因素在尝试中发挥作用，并邀请出现以前没有考虑的因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Rates of suicide attempts among Hispanic adolescent females (one in five) are higher than for their non- Hispanic counterparts (one in ten), yet little is known about Hispanics' attempts, their antecedents, and why Hispanic girls are more likely than other girls to attempt suicide. Although theoretical and clinical formulations about the reasons for this phenomenon have appeared in the literature, these ideas have not been subjected to empirical scrutiny. Using qualitative methods supplemented by quantitative measures, the proposed project will examine the phenomenon using a conceptual framework that encompasses ecological-developmental systems theory. The study will (1) explore the phenomenology of the suicide attempts from the girls' perspective (e.g., antecedent distress, crisis events, subjective experience); (2) explore parents' understandings of their daughters' suicide attempts (including their hypotheses about preceding crisis events and daughters' motivations); and (3) examine the familial, developmental, and sociocultural experiences that distinguish adolescent Latina attempters and their parents from non-attempters and their parents. One hundred adolescent Latinas who have attempted suicide will be recruited to complete questionnaires. We will also interview parents to get multiple informant perspectives on the suicide attempts. To insure that the factors we explore and identify are indeed unique to attempters rather than simply representing aspects shared by most Hispanic girls and families, we will also interview a matched group of 100 Hispanic nonattempters and their parents. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews will be conducted to explore psychological, family and social experiences preceding suicide attempts; why the attempts become the chosen response; and how the attempts are understood or interpreted by the girls. Objective measures of the sociocultural and familial factors posited in the conceptual model will enrich the qualitative data. This emic, intra-ethnic approach can help explain why some Hispanic teenage girls attempt suicide and others do not, and shed light on the interaction of cultural factors with other factors believed to influence suicide attempts. Key research goals are to determine if, and how, the explanatory factors hypothesized in the literature play a role in the attempts, and to invite the emergence of factors not considered previously.