Suicidal Ideation During Adolescence: Genetic Liability & Negative Life Events

Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH)

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.21410
In this podcast, we are joined by Dr. Séverine Lannoy, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioural Genetics.
Séverine is the first author of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP) Open Access paper ‘Suicidal ideation during adolescence: The roles of aggregate genetic liability for suicide attempts and negative life events in the past year’ (doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13653), which is the focus of today’s podcast.
Séverine sets the scene by sharing a brief overview of the paper and providing insight into the methodology used, before turning to the key findings.
With the paper’s results supporting the role of negative life events in suicidal ideation in both boys and girls, Séverine comments on what type of negative events stood out as being particularly impactful and what the implications of this paper are for professionals who work with young people.
Séverine then turns to the gender differences highlighted by the paper, including that for girls, suicidal ideation was associated with both negative life events and aggregate genetic liability (but not the latter for boys) and discusses how she accounts for this difference between boys and girls.
Furthermore, Séverine expands upon the interplay of genes and the environment in risk for suicidal ideation, as well as discusses how CAMH professionals might translate her findings into practice to improve risk assessment and screening procedures.