CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 49Suicide and Self-Harm StudiesHomicide, Infanticide, and Child AbuseGrief, Bereavement, and Mental Health

A multi-method psychological autopsy study on youth suicides in the Netherlands in 2017: Feasibility, main outcomes, and recommendations.

Open access
Mérelle, Saskia, Van Bergen, Diana, Looijmans, Milou, Balt, Elias, Rasing, Sanne, van Domburgh, Lieke, Nauta, Maaike, Sijperda, Onno +5 more·2020·PLoS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0238031PMC PMC7451645
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: In the Netherlands, there was a sharp increase in the number of suicides among 10- to 19-year-olds in 2017. A multi-method psychological autopsy study (PA) was conducted to assess feasibility, identify related factors, and study the interplay of these factors to inform suicide prevention strategies. METHODS: Coroners identified youth suicides in 2017 in their records and then general practitioners (GPs) contacted the parents of these youths. Over a period of 7 months, 66 qualitative interviews were held with the parents, peers, and teachers, providing information on precipitating factors and five topics involving 35 cases (17 boys and 18 girls, mean age 17 years). Furthermore, 43 parents and care professionals filled in questionnaires to examine risk and care-related factors. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. RESULTS: Although registration problems faced by coroners and resistance to contacting bereaved families by GPs hampered the recruitment, most parents highly appreciated being interviewed. Several adverse childhood experiences played a role at an individual level, such as (cyber) bullying, parental divorce, sexual abuse, as well as complex mental disorders, and previous suicide attempts. Two specific patterns stood out: (1) girls characterized by insecurity and a perfectionist attitude, who developed psychopathology and dropped out of school, and (2) boys with a developmental disorder, such as autism, who were transferred to special needs education and therefore felt rejected. In addition, adolescents with complex problems had difficulty finding appropriate formal care. Regarding potential new trends, contagion effects of social media use in a clinical setting and internet use for searching lethal methods were found. CONCLUSION: This first national PA study showed that, as expected, a variety of mostly complex clusters of problems played a role in youth suicides. An infrastructure is needed to continuously monitor, evaluate, and support families after each youth suicide and thereby improve prevention strategies.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1371/journal.pone.0238031

Cites

59 of 63 references verified4 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Mixed support for current treatments has contributed to the general recommendation to provide psychological treatments aimed at improving family relationships.

    “Mixed support for the current treatments has contributed to the general recommendation to provide psychological treatments aimed at improving family relationships [3, 16].”

    From The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of attachment-based family therapy for young adults with high suicidal ideation: protocol of a randomized controlled trial (2024) · cites this paper as [16]

    The Discussion reports problems in youth care trajectories and recommends actively involving the family system in treatment. It does not describe mixed evidence for current treatments or recommend psychological treatments specifically aimed at improving family relationships. No page number is available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [45]Wengraf T. Qualitative research interviewing: Biographic narrative and semi-structured methods London: SAGE; 2001.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Mérelle, S., Van Bergen, D., Looijmans, M., Balt, E., Rasing, S., van Domburgh, L., Nauta, M., Sijperda, O., Mulder, W., Gilissen, R., Franx, G., Creemers, D., & Popma, A.
Affiliations
  • 113 Zelfmoordpreventie (NL)
  • Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
  • University of Groningen (NL)
  • Amsterdam University Medical Centers (NL)
Corresponding author
Mérelle, Saskia
ORCID
Venue
PLoS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2020-08-27
Volume
15
Issue
8
Pages
e0238031
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0238031
PMC
PMC7451645
OpenAlex
W3080613857
Cited by
45
References
59
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 1
FWCI
1.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Pure Amsterdam UMC (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Amsterdam UMC (VU Amsterdam) - Institutional Repository (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
Keywords
youth suicide, psychological autopsy, suicide risk factors, adverse childhood experiences, cyberbullying, parental divorce, sexual abuse, suicide attempts, perfectionism, school dropout, autism spectrum disorder, special education, suicide prevention, bereaved families
MeSH terms
Sexual and Gender Minorities, Suicide Prevention, Adolescent, Feasibility Studies, Female, Humans, Interviews as Topic, Male, Netherlands, Suicide, Social Media

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review