Frequent Moves Increase Suicide Risk in Teens
Reported June 01, 2009
Teenagers and pre-teens who had moved frequently were more likely to make suicide attempts in later years than similar youngsters who had not moved, and the more often they had moved, the higher their risk, a study of children in Denmark has found.
Adolescents ages 11 to 17 who had moved three to five times were about twice as likely to have attempted suicide as those who never had changed residences, while those who had moved more than 10 times were four times as likely to attempt suicide.
Youngsters who had moved more than 15 times were almost five times as likely to attempt suicide, the study’s authors found.
The researchers adjusted the figures to account for other difficulties in the children’s lives that might have influenced the risk of suicide. All changes of residence except those along the same street were defined as moves.
According to lead author Dr. Ping Qin, an associate professor in psychiatric epidemiology at the Centre for Register-Based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark, the analysis does not prove a causal relationship between frequent changes in residence and suicidal behavior but does suggest “a true connection between the two events.”
“We found a strong association between frequent changes of residence and suicidal behavior among children,” Dr. Qin said.
But, she added, “We could not distinguish whether the mobility was a causal risk factor or merely an intermediate variable of other risk factors.”
The study was published on Monday in the June issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry.
The report corroborates earlier studies that have found an association between frequent mobility and children’s mental health. But the new report goes further, because it used actual medical records rather than self-reported survey data and looked at moves throughout childhood rather than just at recent moves, said Dr. Scott J. South, professor of sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, who was not involved in the Danish study but has studied the impact of frequent moves on children.
“The evidence is becoming quite compelling that there is a causal effect of children’s residential mobility on a variety of negative behavioral outcomes,” Dr. South said. “[The children] do worse in school, they are more likely to drop out of high school, and I published a study that found they’re more likely to engage in sexual behavior earlier.”
Dr. Qin and her colleagues used several databases in Denmark — including a hospital registry, a psychiatric registry and a civil registration system that requires citizens to inform authorities any time they change addresses — to identify 4,160 children and teens who had visited a hospital between 1995 and 2006 following a suicide attempt. Another 79 children who had committed suicide were also identified.
Some 55 percent of the more than 4,000 children and teens ages 11 to 17 who sought medical help at a hospital for a suicide attempt had changed residences more than three times, while less than one-third, or 32 percent, of similar children in a control group had moved more than three times.
Of the suicidal children, 7.4 percent had moved more than 10 times, compared with 1.9 percent of the control group, researchers found.
Each of the suicidal children was matched with 30 controls of the same sex and age living in Denmark who were randomly drawn from the population for comparison. Researchers adjusted the data to account for other factors that may have influenced the children’s psychosocial well-being, including whether they had lost a parent or had a history of mental illness.
The researchers did not adjust for poverty, family instability or for the distances moved.
Among the much smaller number of teens and pre-teens who had completed a suicide, a significant association with frequent moves was seen only in adolescents who had moved at least six times, the researchers found.
Teens and pre-teens who had moved 6 to 10 times were almost three times more likely to complete a suicide.
“Little research has addressed the influence of mobility of children’s psychosocial well-being,” Dr. Qin said, adding that adolescence is an inherently turbulent time for children, so moves may be more traumatic. Moves at this age are also unlikely to be the child’s decision, and parents may be too distracted by their own adjustments to pay close attention to a child’s needs, Dr. Qin said.
“Moving from one place to another can result in a breakdown of connections to peer friends, and distress and worries about the new environment,” she said. “All of these factors can be stressful.”