Dr. Kaurin receives a grant from the German Research Foundation to establish a scientific network on the assessment and prevention of suicidality in childhood and adolescence!
With a team of experts from the Ruhr University in Bochum, the University of Freiburg, the Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Leipzig, the Fernuni Hagen and the University of Koblenz-Landau, Prof. Dr. Kaurin is investigating why some children and adolescents develop suicidal thoughts and intentions and how sustainable treatments may look like.
Every year, more than 700,000 people worldwide die by suicide. In 2020, 9,206 suicides were registered in Germany. Suicides among children and adolescents in particular have long-lasting negative effects on family members, schools and clinical professionals. Among adolescents between the ages of ten and 24, suicides are among the leading causes of death in Germany. Unlike other leading causes of death in children and adolescents, suicides could be prevented if timely preventive measures were taken. In order to sustainably reduce the risk of suicide in children and adolescents, reliable and valid diagnostics are a necessary prerequisite. Currently, however, our knowledge is limited. This is most likely due to the fact that previous studies have recorded suicidality and its associated risk factors primarily as distal or static phenomena. However, suicidal ideation, suicidal behavior, and associated risk factors are characterized by a pronounced transsituational inconsistency. This circumstance results in an incongruence between the methods used to date to study and capture suicidality, its actual temporal resolution, and the multidetermined, presumably idiosyncratic nature of relevant risk factors. Complicating matters further, the collection of suicide risk information (particularly in real time) raises significant ethical, methodological, as well as safety concerns. As a result, the field is dominated by lingering concerns that asking adolescents about suicidal thoughts and actions may be harmful (i.e., may have iatrogenic effects). Before research on suicidality in childhood and adolescence and related therapeutic implications can progress, these empirical gaps must be addressed in a sustained manner.
The goal of the network is to address methodological, conceptual, and clinical-practical issues in suicide research in childhood and adolescence. Methods for improving diagnostic approaches are to be developed and applied. In particular, developmentally sensitive, intensive longitudinal data collection (in the context of outpatient surveys), its clinical utility, and potential risks (e.g., iatrogenic effects) and ethical issues that are important for conducting research in this area will be discussed. These steps will serve the long-term goal of preparing a multicenter randomized controlled intervention trial.
Last modified: 12.10.2023
