Associations Between Suicidal High School Students’ Help-Seeking and Their Attitudes and Perceptions of Social Environment

Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents, many of whom fail to disclose suicide concerns to adults who might help. This study examined patterns and predictors of help-seeking behavior among adolescents who seriously considered suicide in the past year. 2,737 students (50.9?% female, 46.9?% male; racial distribution 79.5?% Caucasian, 11.9?% Hispanic/Latino, and 3.6?% Black/African-American) from 12 high schools in rural/underserviced communities were surveyed to assess serious suicide ideation (SI) in the past year, disclosure of SI to adults and peers, attempts to get help, attitudes about help-seeking, perceptions of school engagement, and coping support. Help-seeking was defined as both disclosing SI to an adult and perceiving oneself as seeking help. The relationship between adolescents' help-seeking disclosure and (1) help-seeking attitudes and (2) perceptions of social resources was examined among suicidal help-seeking youth, suicidal non-help-seeking youth, and non-suicidal youth. Of the 381 (14?%) students reporting SI, only 23?% told an adult, 29?% sought adult help, and 15?% did both. Suicidal help-seekers were similar to non-suicidal peers on all measures of help-seeking attitudes and social environment perceptions. Positive attitudes about help-seeking from adults at school, perceptions that adults would respond to suicide concerns, willingness to overcome peer secrecy requests, and greater coping support and engagement with the school were associated with students' increased disclosure of SI and help-seeking. This study supports prevention strategies that change student norms, attitudes and social environments to promote help-seeking among adolescents with SI. Promising intervention targets include increasing students' perceptions of the availability and capability of adults to help them, and strengthening students' understanding of how existing resources can help them cope.     

Why do Indonesian politicians promote shari’a laws? An analytic framework for Muslim-majority democracies

Taking the discussion in the existing literature on the adoption of shari’a laws in democratising Muslim-majority countries as a starting point, we posit that there are two broad motivations for democratically-elected politicians to adopt shari’a laws and regulations: ideological conviction on the one hand and response to the expressed or perceived preference of constituents on the other hand. The ‘demand side’ can be further divided into the preferences of individual voters, and the interests of groups which act as power brokers, influencing the voting choices of individual citizens. These groups may be economic, religious, or other actors. These motivations are not mutually exclusive; the passage of a given shari’a regulation may fulfil two or all three of them simultaneously. However, we posit that the interaction between the place, timing, and content of shari’a laws passed in a nation as a whole will vary in various predictable ways, according to the dominant motivations. The dominant motivation may also affect the vigour with which the law is implemented.     

Virtuous Interactions in Removing Exclusion: The Link between Foreign Market Access and Access to Education

We outline a methodology which aims to give an answer to the widespread demand of impact analyses by regulators or by funding agencies which need to evaluate the current and past performance of development projects and may lack time series evidence. We devise a retrospective panel data approach to evaluate the dynamics of the effects of fair trade affiliation on the schooling decisions of a sample of Thai organic rice producers across the past 20 years. We find that the probability of school enrolment in families with more than two children is significantly affected by fair trade affiliation years. We try to ascertain whether our finding is robust to endogeneity of producers' choices of local cooperative affiliation and adoption of organic techniques. The significant difference between pre- and post-fair trade affiliation performance documents that fair trade participation generates a significant break in the schooling decisions of affiliated households.     

Reviews

Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Labourers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860–1910 by Patrick Harries. Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg; Heinemann, Portsmouth NH; and James Currey, London. 1994. 328 pp. including photographs, maps and tables. R75.00 paperback.

African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenc.0 Marques, 1877–1962 by Jeanne Marie Penvenne. Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg; Heinemann, Portsmouth NH; and James Currey, London. 1995. 242 pp. including maps, halftones and tables. R86.00 paperback.

Historical Dictionary of Namibia by John J. Grotpeter. The Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, New Jersey and London. No 57 in the African Historical Dictionaries series. 1994. xxvi plus 725 pp. including a chronology, map, appendices and bibliography. $89.50 hardback.

Out in the Cold: Academic Boycotts and the Isolation of South Africa by L.J. Haricombe and F.W. Lancaster. Information Resources Press, Arlington, Virginia. 1995. xiv plus 158 pp. including tables, bibliography and index. $29.50 hardback.

The Foreign Policy of Zimbabwe by Ulf Engel. Institute of African Affairs, Hamburg. 1994. vii plus 479 pp. including diagrams, tables, notes, bibliography and indices.

The Politics of Two Sudans: The South and the North 1821 ‐1969 by Deng D. Akol Ruay. The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden. 1994. 183 pp. £14.95.

Namibia's Liberation Struggle: The Two‐Edged Sword edited by Colin Leys and John S. Saul. James Curry, London and Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio. 1995. x plus 212 pp. including maps, notes and index. £12.95 paperback.

Namibia and External Resources: The Case of Swedish Development Assistance by Bertil Oden, Henning Melber, Tor Sellstrom and Chris Tapscott. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Research Report No. 96, Uppsala. 1994. 122 pp. including map, references and tables. £5.95 paperback.

Short‐Cut to Decay: The Case of the Sudan edited by Sharif Harir and Terje Tvedt. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala. 1994. 275 pp. £19.95.

Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession by Shula Marks. Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg (South Africa), Macmillan Press Ltd (Great Britain), and St. Martin's Press, Inc., (USA). 1994. xiii plus 306 pp. including notes, bibliography and index. R82.00 paperback.

Transition to Democracy in Nigeria (1985–1993) by Tunji Olagunju, Adele Jinadu and Sam Oyovbaire. Spectrum Books Ltd., Ibadan and London. 1993. 278 pp.     

Emotion Regulation Difficulties, Youth–Adult Relationships, and Suicide Attempts Among High School Students in Underserved Communities

To develop and refine interventions to prevent youth suicide, knowledge is needed about specific processes that reduce risk at a population level. Using a cross-sectional design, the present study tested hypotheses regarding associations between self-reported suicide attempts, emotion regulation difficulties, and positive youth–adult relationships among 7,978 high-school students (48.6 % male, 49.9 % female) in 30 high schools from predominantly rural, low-income communities. 683 students (8.6 %) reported a past-year suicide attempt. Emotion regulation difficulties and a lack of trusted adults at home and school were associated with increased risk for making a past-year suicide attempt, above and beyond the effects of depressive symptoms and demographic factors. The association between emotion regulation difficulties and suicide attempts was modestly lower among students who perceived themselves as having higher levels of trusted adults in the family, consistent with a protective effect. Having a trusted adult in the community (outside of school and family) was associated with fewer suicide attempts in models that controlled only for demographic covariates, but not when taking symptoms of depression into account. These findings point to adolescent emotion regulation and relationships with trusted adults as complementary targets for suicide prevention that merit further intervention studies. Reaching these targets in a broad population of adolescents will require new delivery systems and “option rich” (OR) intervention designs.