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Abstract
We provide a systematic review of suicide among adolescents with physical disabilities, intellectual disability and learning disability. A search was performed of English articles published prior to December 2014 in the PubMed database for studies examining suicide, suicidal behavior and suicidal ideation among adolescents with and without varied disabilities. Nine studies were retrieved, of which two studies examined adolescent populations with physical disabilities, three looked at suicide in adolescents with intellectual disability and four studies examined adolescents with learning disabilities. There were consistent results to prove that these adolescents with special needs had an increased tendency to commit suicide and had expressed increased suicidal ideation Conclusions: An increased risk of suicide among adolescents with physical disabilities, intellectual disability and learning disability relative to those without suggests the need for innovative diagnostic and prevention strategies for this population. Future research which determine factors associated with suicide among adolescents with different disabilities are essential to reduce the disproportionate suicide risk in this population.
Keywords: Adolescence, disability, intellectual and developmental disability, suicide
Introduction
Suicide is an important health issue due to its significant burden on mortality in the world today. Approximately 1 million people die because of suicide worldwide (1). Suicide is a leading cause of death especially in the youth. The rate of suicide in youth has increased tremendously from 2 in 100,000 in 1960 to 12 in 100,000 by 1992 (2). Suicide in youth has been deeply linked to recent stressful life events and precipitating factors associated with, principally, interpersonal and legal problems, and to a lesser extent, work and financial issues (3). The incidence and prevalence of suicidal symptoms and suicide attempts among United States adolescents is difficult to estimate due to the absence of central public health recording registries. Eighty three percent of the self-inflicted injuries occurred between the ages of 15 and 19 years (4).
There are various risk factors for youth suicide. It ranges from a myriad of factors from psychiatric diagnoses like mood disorders, conduct disorders, affective disorder and depression (5). Apart from the most common causes of depression and psychiatric illnesses, stress and disruptive family events were closely associated with suicide in children and adolescents (6). In spite of the paramount importance of suicide in adolescents at risk,...