Developmental pathways from child maltreatment to adolescent suicide-related behaviors: The internalizing and externalizing comorbidity hypothesis.
Child maltreatment is a robust risk factor for suicidal ideation and behaviors during adolescence. Elevations in internalizing and externalizing symptomology have been identified as two distinct developmental pathways linking child maltreatment and adolescent risk for suicide. However, recent research suggests that the co-occurrence of internalizing and externalizing symptomology may form a distinct etiological pathway for adolescent risk behaviors. Using the Longitudinal Studies on Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) sample (N = 1,314), the present study employed a person-centered approach to identify patterns of concurrent change in internalizing and externalizing psychopathology over five time points from early childhood to adolescence in relation to previous experiences of child maltreatment and subsequent suicidal ideation and behaviors. Results indicated four distinct bivariate externalizing and internalizing growth trajectories. Group membership in a heightened comorbid internalizing and externalizing symptom trajectory mediated the association between childhood abuse and adolescent suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviors. These findings suggest that the concurrent development of externalizing and internalizing symptoms in childhood and adolescence may constitute a unique developmental trajectory that confers risk for suicide-related outcomes.
['Duprey|Erinn Bernstein|EB|0000-0002-1956-1073', 'Oshri|Assaf|A|', 'Liu|Sihong|S|']
D000293:Adolescent D000294:Adolescent Behavior D002648:Child D002649:Child Abuse D002675:Child, Preschool D015897:Comorbidity D006801:Humans D008137:Longitudinal Studies D059020:Suicidal Ideation D013405:Suicide
child maltreatment adolescence comorbidity suicidal ideation and behavior growth-mixture modeling