The relationship between Self-esteem and Suicide rates among adolescents and young adults

Suicide among adolescents and young adults is a global health concern. It is the second leading cause of death in this age group. The relationship between self-esteem and suicide rates among adolescents and young adults is a critical matter.

Understanding Self-esteem and Suicide

Self-esteem refers to an individual’s subjective evaluation of their own worth. It plays a crucial role in mental health, influencing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Low self-esteem is often associated with negative outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Suicidal tendencies are observed in adolescents of the age 10-14 years old and may progress during young adulthood, 15-19 years old affecting both men and women.

What is the link between Self-esteem and Suicide?

Research has shown a significant relationship between self-esteem and suicidal ideation. Individuals with low self-esteem often report high psychological distress, which can lead to hopelessness and eventually heightened suicidal ideation. In contrast, high levels of self-esteem have been indicated to mitigate suicide risk.

Suicidal thoughts, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and self-esteem predicted about 80% of suicidal behaviours. Moreover, low self-esteem in childhood could be a significant risk factor for the development of suicidal ideation in young adulthood.

What is the role of Self-esteem in Suicide Prevention?

Understanding the role of self-esteem in suicide prevention is crucial. Building positive social relationships with peers and avoiding serious injury appear key to suicide prevention strategies for vulnerable adolescents. Targeted programs by age group and sex for such indicators could improve mental health during adolescence in low and middle-income countries, given the diverse risk profiles for suicidal ideation and attempts. 

How St Martin’s supports their residents to cope with Suicidal Idealization and prevent Suicidal incidents?

St Martins is an organization that specializes in Mental Health and unfortunately, Suicidal Idealization is a common concern. In our organization, we value the importance of building positive rapport amongst staff and residents aiming to improving independency, confidence and boost self-esteem. To be more specific, St Martins focuses on:

• Empowerment of all residents in order to become self-confident and develop autonomy, self-sufficiency while living in the community.
• Social events such as resident’s meetings, residents’ coproduction meetings and other events that bring residents and staff together and encourage socialisation, communication, resolution while sharing ideas and suggestions of improving daily living and offer solutions on daily matters, concerns giving the essence of engagement and participation.
• In addition, St Martins takes very seriously residents’ wellbeing and for that every resident has an allocated Mental Health key worker that can talk to about negative thoughts, feelings. Key work sessions allow residents to have one-to-one meetings to discuss Suicide, Self-harm, hearing voices or thoughts of harming others.
• St Martin’s staff are trained to observe and acknowledge symptoms of relapse, mood swings, challenging behaviours, abnormal changes on a resident’s routine and sufficiently trained on taking actions on time in order to prevent Suicidal idealisation.
• Our activities offer a variety of hobby developments and cultivate each resident’s skills, interests, creativity in order to tackle depression, anxiety, anger, boredom, isolation, neglect, low self-esteem by building a structured daily routine that meet individual needs and goals.
• St Martin’s advocates on going back to work scheme and generates vacancies for in house jobs for residents that are working towards their recovery and wish to go back to employment.

Sources

1bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com              2frontiersin.org