Citation

Mai AS, Wan YM, Tan BJW, Tan EK. Front. Psychiatry 2024; 15: e1386153.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Frontiers Media)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1386153

PMID

38962059

PMCID

PMC11219559

Abstract

The gender paradox in suicide has been described as early as 1998 (1), referring to the observation that while women demonstrated higher rates of suicide attempts, men had higher rates of death by suicide. This has prompted important epidemiological research into the gender differences in suicide, leading to consistent evidence supporting this observation. However, the biological basis for such gender differences is poorly understood, and there is increasing interest in the relationship between suicide, gender, and the underlying neurobiology. There is a pressing need to better understand both the psychosocial and neurobiological pathways of suicide, especially given the rise in suicide rates across all age groups in recent years.

This gender paradox is similarly observed in adolescents, who constitute an especially important demographic for suicide research, with suicide being a leading cause of death in this age group. Current suicide research has shown interesting but important gender-related differences in risk factors (Figure 1). Depressive symptoms and intimate partner violence are more important in female than male adolescents, the latter group is more affected by conduct problems, access to means, and drug abuse (2). Nonsuicidal self-injury, an important predictor of suicidality, similarly exhibits gender-related differences in terms of clinical characteristics and the suicide risk it confers (3).

Language: en

Keywords

suicide; adolescence; epigenomics and epigenetics; genomics; neurobiologic basis