Diagnostics of Suicidal Risk in Adolescents: Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews

Abstract

Study relevance. Revealing groups of people at high risk of suicide is important for suicide prevention, especially among adolescents, and the practical way of achieving it is screening adolescents for suicide risk. A major obstacle to the development of screening protocols and other preventive procedures is lack of data or conflicting data on measures that can be used in adolescent samples. Objective. The current systematic review of systematic reviews was carried out to discover measures of suicide risk with a good predictive validity on adolescent samples. Recommendations for screening implementation were also narratively reviewed. Method. Literature search was carried out in PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, EBSCO Academic Search Premier, EBSCO Health Source: Nursing and Academic Edition, and Elibrary. 10 papers that satisfied all inclusion criteria (systematic reviews of measures assessing the risk of suicide in children and adolescents) were included in the study. Results. The reviews included in the study were of satisfactory quality. Predictive validity was reported for 18 measures, 16 of them were self-report, and 2 were versions of the Implicit Associative Test. Computerized tests showed relatively low predictive validity coefficients, while self-report measures (including screening questions) had higher predictive validity. Conclusion. More studies of predictive validity of the suicide screening measures on adolescent samples are needed. The decision to use a measure in the screening protocol should be also based on practical considerations and resources available to medical workers on cite.