Clinical Research Directory

Associated Psychiatric Disorders in Children Hospitalized for a Serious Suicide Attempt

Sponsor: Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris

Summary

Several studies agree on the increase in suicide attempts in children over the past 15 years. This trend has been aggravated by the COVID 19 pandemic. It is recognized that suicide attempts are mostly encountered in individuals with a psychiatric disorder. Serious suicide attempts, which probably better reflect the risk of completed suicide, are very poorly known and have been very little explored. They could be related to more specific and earlier psychiatric disorders or even concern children with developmental particularities that are insufficiently defined to fall under a categorical diagnosis, but which could be better understood with dimensional measurements. Better characterizing them would seem quite important given their high lethality. Indeed, a high lethality is found for half of the suicide attempts in children fewer than 12, contrasting with a moderate or low intentionality ; in children, the means used are often more violent and more lethal than in adolescents (over 12 years old): hanging, firearm, etc. The Necker-Enfants Malades hospital has a pediatric neurosurgery department as well as a specialized multidisciplinary team to care for polytraumatized children in a regional "Trauma Center" type structure. As a result, most children and adolescents in Ile-de-France who have made a violent suicide attempt are sent to the Necker hospital. Once medico-surgically stabilized, these children and adolescents are assessed by the hospital's child psychiatry team. This regional recruitment makes it possible to have an epidemiological representativeness. From this population, the investigative team proposes to better characterize the developmental profile and psychiatric disorders of children who have made a serious suicide attempt. The study also proposes to examine in detail the psycho-emotional development as well as the psychopathological characteristics of these children in order to shed light on these early and lethal acting out. The investigative team proposes in particular to use dimensional evaluations to analyze behavioral traits in more detail. To the knowledge of the child psychiatry department of the Necker Enfants Malades hospital, there is no such study to date. In addition to the question of neurodevelopmental disorders, an ancillary study will make it possible to question attachment disorders in children who have made a serious suicide attempt. In fact, a link between attachment disorders and suicidal ideation or attempted suicide has been shown in the literature. Attachment disorders correspond to an early imbalance in the bond between a child and the primary caregiver, particularly before the age of 3. Attachment relationships that do not allow a solid bond between the young child and the person occupying the maternal function may not be pathological in themselves but would be risk factors for pathologies in adolescence and adulthood, and in particular a category of so-called disorganized attachment disorders in the occurrence of dissociative symptoms.

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