No better than chance? Developments in predicting adolescent suicide, a commentary on Mars et al. (2018) and Beckman et al. (2018)

Abstract

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in young people aged 10–24 globally (Patton et al., 2009) and it is therefore of vital importance that we understand more about how to identify those at risk. Many of those who proceed to die by suicide will not have interacted with mental health services (Kidger et al., 2012), and therefore predictors of suicide attempts and completed suicides are relevant not only to mental health services but also to schools and communities. Despite years of research, it continues to be challenging to identify those young people who undergo transition from thinking about suicide to attempting suicide as well as those young people who undergo transition from self-harm to completed suicide. This commentary will look at the two accompanying papers by Mars et al. (2018) and Beckman et al. (2018); which seek to increase our understanding of which children and young people may proceed to engage with self-harm and die by suicide.