Article Analysis Essay on Suicide and Suicidal Behavior

The research Suicide and Suicidal Behavior by Nock et al. (2008), was conducted to tackle and explore the extent to which suicide cases and suicidal behavior have become prevalent in the current times. Specifically, the study included the use of epidemiology of suicide and other suicidal behavior data from credible governmental sources such as the National Vital statistics System of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and other previous research in conducted in the field of interest especially those from PubMed electronic database. With narrowed down aims of studying the protective and risk factors for, the prevalence of and trends in suicidal behavior within the US and across the globe. The cross-national countries considered included South and Central America, Eastern and Western Europe and Asia since they have the highest indicated rates of suicide and suicidal behavior (Nock et al., 2008).

After a multi-dimensional investigative quantitative research considering data from between 1970- 2007, the study was able to establish that suicide in the US contributes to 10.8 deaths in every 100,000 persons putting it as the 11th cause of deaths within the region. Cross-nationally, suicide rates were classified to be 16.7 cases in every 100,000 persons. Pertaining suicidal behaviors, it was gathered that self-injury was common among the adolescent and young adults where it reduces monotonically through adulthood. In this case, there was 5.6-14.3% suicide ideation and 1.9-8.7% suicide attempts across the US for those at 18 years or just above with the onset age ranging between 4 and 5 years and peak rates at 16 years. On the other hand, the cross-national suicidal behavior rates ranging between 3.1-56.0% for suicide ideation, 0.9-19.5% suicide plans and suicide attempts ranging from 0.4-5.1% with the onset age and behaviors trends similar to those depicted in the US. Notably, in the cross-national category, suicide was ranked as the 14th leading cause of death (Nock et al., 2008).

Additionally, the study was able to categorize suicide and suicidal behaviors as to being linked to specific risk factors. These include demographic factors such as sex and age where males and young adults are susceptible and the racial aspect where the Natives and the Hispanic Americans are even more vulnerable. Psychiatric factors such as personality disorders, psychotic behaviors, unstable moods, substance/ alcohol use and impulse-control are causing more suicidal cases and behaviors. Other factors included psychological, biological and stressful life events.

In conclusion, the article was all rounded regarding delivery where it considered an array of insights based on credible resources. For this reason, I find the article credible and viable enough to have made the conclusive remarks that suicidal behaviors and suicidal deaths are among the highest causes of mortality in the world. Further, considering the number of sources used (1,052 sources) and the extensive range of data used for the study (1997-2007) I find the article having a good basis of the arguments it has raised. In other words, the authors did extensive research that enabled him to generalize on the subject matter. Specifically, even after considering many sources as already mentioned, the researchers acknowledge that they only depicted the results and findings that were outstanding and common since there was a constraint of space within the study. That means; the study did consider the limitations of using the data they used to generalize on the case and trends of the whole world. As such, I conclude that the authors made a transparent yet effective research in which case they were able to tackle the topic suicide and suicidal behavior through linking it to both psychological, biological and physical factors.

References

Nock, M., K., Borges, G., Bromet, E., J., Cha, C., B., Kessler, R., C., and Lee, S. (2008). Suicide and Suicidal Behavior. Epidemiol Rev., 30(1), 133154. doi:10.1093/epirev/mxn002.