Investigating the Sociodemographic Features of Attempted Suicide cases in a Paediatric Emergency Department from a Primary Healthcare Perspective

The present study aimed to understand the causative sociodemographic factors to prevent the ever-increasing childhood suicides. The records of the patients presented to the paediatric emergency department of Samsun Training and Research Hospital for attempted suicide between 01 January 2019 and 30 June 30 2021 were investigated in this cross-sectional, descriptive study. SPSS (version 20.0) software package was used for data analyses. A total of 61 children were included in this study. There was no record of mortality. The rate of repeated suicide attempts was 11.4% (n=7). The rate of girls who had attempted suicide (n=53, 86.9%) was higher than that of boys. The mean age of the children was 15.15±2.19 years. The parents of 48% of the cases were married. Hospital admissions most frequently occurred between 6:00 pm and 12:00 am midnight (n=22, 36.1%) and between July and September (n=20, 32.8%). Drug intoxication was the most common form of suicide (n=54, 88.5%), whereas the most frequent reason for attempting suicide was argument with a first-degree relative (n=12, 19.7%). Children with unmarried parents more frequently attempted suicide and were more frequently diagnosed with psychiatric disorders (p=0.031 and p=0.032, respectively). Children diagnosed with psychiatric disorders had a higher rate of previous attempted suicides (p=0.001). It may be valuable to examine problems specific to certain age groups, pay attention to the signs, keep the primary healthcare institutions alert and develop clinical protocols for such cases to prevent suicides.