Suicide ideation and social desirability among school-aged young people.
A mixed male-female sample of 950 school-aged adolescents, corresponding to 10% of the young population aged 15-19 living in a rural district of Northeast Italy, was investigated with self-reported questionnaires about the links between social desirability and suicide ideation. On the whole 30.6% of females and 23.9% of males reported suicidal ideation of some degree, with 5% in both genders reporting suicide ideation of a high degree (i.e. quite a lot/extremely often). Those who scored higher at the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS) reported lower levels of psychiatric symptoms on the Symptom checklist 90R (SCL-90R), with the "denial" subscale of the SDS resulting specifically associated to lower scores on SCL-90R items measuring hopelessness, thoughts about death and suicide ideation. The personality traits measured by the Marlowe-Crowne SDS, such as defensiveness, denial and self-deception, might be conceived as a protection against psychiatric disorders and suicide ideation.
Miotto
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Department of Mental Health, ULSS 7, Conegliano, TV, Italy.
Preti
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D000293:Adolescent; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003469:Culture; D003717:Denial, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012649:Self Concept; D012928:Social Desirability; D013406:Suicide, Attempted / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult