Psychology Suicide Essay, Research Paper

I wanted to do my third journal entry on parenting styles and as I was searching for an article I found one connecting all three of the last subjects we were talking about in class, suicide, cognition and parenting styles together. Since this article connected so much to class I decided it was too much of a coincidence to pass up and decided to write my journal connecting all three subjects, but concentrate mostly on parenting styles and suicide. This article is about a study that was conducted on the early detection of suicidal behavior in adolescence. It studied the relationship between suicide and adolescents self-reports of perceived parental styles, pessimism, and the spectrum of suicidal behaviors. The study was conducted on three hundred and seven Australian students with an average age of 15.8. The students completed a questionnaire that included demographic details, the Influential Relationships Questionnaire, the Beck Hypothesis scale, and the Adolescent Suicide Questionnaire. The Influential Relationships Questionnaire was used to assess parenting styles, hopelessness was measured by the Beck Hopelessness Scale and suicidality was measured by the Adolescent Suicide Questionnaire.

The first topic talked about in this study is the relationship between suicide and parenting techniques. The first point the article brings up in regards to parenting which I found to be important was the relationship between suicide and parental discord, parental separation, changes in caretaker, and physical or sexual abuse. Our book talks about the effects of divorce on teens. The book says divorce can lead to stress on teens because it means change. Adolescents are already going through so many different changes; any other one will obviously cause stress. The main reasons why divorce causes stress according to our book are less money for the child s needs, the absence of one parent so the child loses an important source of support, and the difficulty for a child to become close with both parents because often one parent tries to turn the child against the other parent, which is the biggest cause of stress. When a child is caught between two parents they are more likely to feel anxious and dressed following a divorce.

The second relationship between parenting and suicide is the effect of the combination of low care and high overprotection which has been termed affectionless control. To me, this term sounded a lot like something we learned about in class, a parenting style called authoritarian. Authoritarian is one of the four parenting styles as defined by Diana Baumrind. Baumrind described the authoritarian parent to be demanding but mot particularly responsive to their child s point of view. A child who is constantly being told what to do with a reason for doing it will be obedient but will often give in to peer pressure. They tend to be more dependent, unhappy, unfriendly, fearful and moody. They also have very low self esteem and lack social skills. These negative character traits can be associated with the lack of warmth between the parents and the child.

The last point I am going to bring up is the relationship between hopelessness and suicide. This study defined pessimism as the cognitive dimension of hopelessness. An Adolescents perceptions of parental styles were assumed to predate cognition of hopelessness and suicidal behavior. In the book also discusses the relationship between hopelessness and depression. This study goes even further to define the reason for adolescents hopelessness. They say a large factor that causes adolescent s to become hopeless is their parents parenting style.

The results of this study were 49% of the sample reported ever having suicide ideation, 14% reported having planned suicide attempts without following through, 13% reported having made suicide threats, 30% reported having engaged in deliberate self-harm and 9% reported having made suicide attempts. There was no difference in gender effects in the prevalence of suicidal behaviors. The study showed there was a significant relationship between low parental care and suicidality and high parental overprotection and suicidality. There was also a strong relationship between high parental criticism and suicidality. So to connect all this information together an authoritarian parenting style attributes to feelings of hopelessness that in turn leads to depression which could eventually lead to suicide.