Ahouanse RD, Chang W, Ran HL, Fang D, Che YS, Deng WH, Wang SF, Peng JW, Chen L, Xiao YY. Childhood maltreatment and suicide ideation: A possible mediation of social support. World J Psychiatry 2022; 12(3): 483-493 [PMID: 35433330 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i3.483]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Yuan-Yuan Xiao, PhD, Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, No. 1168 West Chunrong Road, Yuhua Street, Chenggong District, Kunming 650500, Yunnan Province, China. 33225647@qq.com
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatry. Mar 19, 2022; 12(3): 483-493 Published online Mar 19, 2022. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i3.483
Childhood maltreatment and suicide ideation: A possible mediation of social support
Roland Donald Ahouanse, Wei Chang, Hai-Liang Ran, Die Fang, Yu-San Che, Wen-Hang Deng, Si-Fan Wang, Jun-Wei Peng, Lin Chen, Yuan-Yuan Xiao
Roland Donald Ahouanse, Wei Chang, Hai-Liang Ran, Die Fang, Yu-San Che, Wen-Hang Deng, Si-Fan Wang, Jun-Wei Peng, Lin Chen, Yuan-Yuan Xiao, Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650500, Yunnan Province, China
Author contributions: Ahouanse RD and Chang W contributed equally as joint first authors; Xiao YY designed the study; Ahouanse RD, Chang W, Ran HL, Fang D, Che YS, Deng WH, Wang SF, Peng JW, and Chen L collected and verified the data; Ahouanse RD and Xiao YY performed data analysis; Ahouanse RD and Chang W drafted the manuscript; Xiao YY provided critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported bythe National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82060601; Top Young Talents of Yunnan Ten Thousand Talents Plan, No. YNWR-QNBJ-2018-286; and Innovative Research Team of Yunnan Province, No. 202005AE160002.
Institutional review board statement: Before the survey, study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Kunming Medical University.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The database of the current study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yuan-Yuan Xiao, PhD, Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, No. 1168 West Chunrong Road, Yuhua Street, Chenggong District, Kunming 650500, Yunnan Province, China. 33225647@qq.com
Received: August 9, 2021 Peer-review started: August 17, 2021 First decision: October 17, 2021 Revised: October 23, 2021 Accepted: February 19, 2022 Article in press: February 19, 2022 Published online: March 19, 2022 Processing time: 221 Days and 5.5 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Existing literature suggests a positive link between childhood maltreatment (CM) and suicide ideation (SI). Nevertheless, whether social support significantly mediates this association remains unknown.
AIM
To investigate whether social support significantly mediates the association between CM and SI.
METHODS
In this cross-sectional study of 4732 adolescents from southwest China, we intended to discuss the association between CM and multiple types of SI. In addition, the mediation of major types of social support in this association was also investigated. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect the data. A series of multivariate logistic regression models were employed to estimate the association between different types of CM, social support, and SI. The possible mediation of social support in the association between CM and SI was assessed using the path model.
RESULTS
Based on the cutoffs for subscales of Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, 928 (19.61%), 1269 (26.82%), 595 (12.57%), 2337 (49.39%), and 3067 (64.81%) respondents reported physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect, respectively. Among all the social sources, parental support presented as a significant mediator in the association between emotional maltreatment, both abuse and neglect, and all three types of SI: 1-wk, 1-year, and lifetime. Parental social support mediated 5.31% and 29.23%, 4.80% and 24.50%, and 7.04% and 44.42% of the overall emotional abuse-SI and emotional neglect-SI associations, respectively.
CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest that improving parental social support might be effective in preventing suicidal risk related to childhood emotional maltreatment in adolescents.
Core Tip: Childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with suicide ideation (SI). In the current study, we investigated the mediating role of social support in the association between CM and SI in a large sample (4732) of Chinese children and adolescents. Our results revealed a strong association between emotional CM and SI. In addition, only parental social support has been presented as a significant mediator in the association between emotional maltreatment and SI. The current study highlighted the intervention relevance of parental social support in emotional CM associated with suicidal risk. Rebuilding the parent-child relationship may be a promising way in preventing emotional CM-related suicide.
