Suicidal because I don't feel connected or vice versa? A longitudinal study of suicidal ideation and connectedness among child welfare youth.

Suicide is a major public health problem among youth involved with the child welfare system. Although social connectedness rests at the core of many prevention approaches, we know little about this relationship over time in this vulnerable population. This study tested the hypotheses that inverse relationships would exist between connectedness in three social domains (i.e., caregiver, peers, and school) and suicidal ideation over time. The current study used baseline and 18-month follow-up data from 995 youth who participated in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II)-a nationally representative study of children and families investigated by a child welfare agency conducted from 2008 to 2011. A cross-lagged path model was used for the analysis. There were significant main effects of suicidal ideation at Time 1 on peer connectedness (β= -.17, p < .01) and caregiver connectedness (β= -.12, p < .05) at Time 2, but not on school connectedness (β= -.05, ns). There was no main effect of any of the connectedness variables at Time 1 on suicidal ideation at Time 2. Screening for suicidal ideation is important for managing immediate risk but our findings suggest that such ideation also foreshadows disconnectedness from their primary caregiver and peers in the future. These findings demonstrate that there is clinical value in engaging child-welfare-involved youth and their social systems about how their suicide-related experiences may affect vital social ties. Therefore, there may be merit to designing and exploring the effects of pilot programming focused on mitigating social distancing that suicide-related experiences engender.