Epidemiology and Nature of Suicide Attempts in Children and Adolescents at the Tertiary Care Pediatric Hospitals; a Multicentre Retrospective Study in Turkey

Introduction: Suicide and suicide attempts are among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the youth population worldwide, with drastically increased rates over the past years. Objectives: We aimed to investigate the major risk factors, sociodemographic characteristics, and prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities in children that hospitalized in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) for self-poisoning suicide attempts through drug overdose. Methods: We performed a descriptive, cross-sectional retrospective study, including all the cases of suicide attempts that hospitalized at pediatric intensive care unit between January 2015 and December 2020. Results: In the study period, 356 children of self-poisoning suicide occurred, 20 cases were excluded from the study. The mean age of the study population was 14.98 +/- 1.53 years. Seventy (20.8%) children were within 10-13 years with the predominance of female gender (female/male sex ratio: 3.35/1). Suicidal attempts were more common in females (p = 0.001). Considering the nature of attempt, toxic drug overdose (95.5%) appeared as the most frequent method of suicide, followed by intake of pesticides (4.5%). Antipyretics and antidepressants were the common pharmaceuticals involved in drug toxicity (21%, 19.3%). Conclusions: The present results showed that the majority of suicide attempts occurred during adolescence, with an increase in pre-adolescence at a considerable rate. Overall, it is important to increase the knowledge of pediatricians about suicide attempts in children and provide psychosocial support for children and their families as a preventive measure after their first attempt.