A comparison between girls who attempted suicide but were not depressed and depressed girls who did not attempt suicide

Abstract

Depression is believed to be one the strongest predictors of suicide. Our aim was to compare adolescent girls who were depressed but did not attempt suicide and girls who attempted suicide but were not depressed. The study was carried out in two hospitals from 2005 to 2007. One hundred and ten girls participated in the study. 70 girls who had attempted suicide but were not depressed and 40 girls with a diagnosis of depression who had not attempted suicide. Their age was from 11 to 18 (average 15.3) years. Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment Youth Self-Report (ASEBA_YSR) was used. Depressed girls who did not attempt suicide were more anxious (p=0.026) and withdrawn (p<0.001) and had lower social competence (p=0.002) and more social difficulities (p=0.065). Girls who attemted suicide had higher scores on rule-breaking behavior sub-scale (p=0.002). These results suggest that the psychopathological and social functioning pattern is different in non-depressed girls who attempt suicide compared to depressed girls who do not attempt suicide.