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Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

For typically developing adolescents, being bullied is associated with increased risk of suicidality. Although adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at increased risk of both bullying and suicidality, there is very little research that examines the extent to which an experience of bein...

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Autores principales: Holden, Rachel, Mueller, Joanne, McGowan, John, Sanyal, Jyoti, Kikoler, Maxim, Simonoff, Emily, Velupillai, Sumithra, Downs, Johnny
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8647922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32198982
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.2292
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author Holden, Rachel
Mueller, Joanne
McGowan, John
Sanyal, Jyoti
Kikoler, Maxim
Simonoff, Emily
Velupillai, Sumithra
Downs, Johnny
author_facet Holden, Rachel
Mueller, Joanne
McGowan, John
Sanyal, Jyoti
Kikoler, Maxim
Simonoff, Emily
Velupillai, Sumithra
Downs, Johnny
author_sort Holden, Rachel
collection PubMed
description For typically developing adolescents, being bullied is associated with increased risk of suicidality. Although adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at increased risk of both bullying and suicidality, there is very little research that examines the extent to which an experience of being bullied may increase suicidality within this specific population. To address this, we conducted a retrospective cohort study to investigate the longitudinal association between experiencing bullying and suicidality in a clinical population of 680 adolescents with ASD. Electronic health records of adolescents (13–17 years), using mental health services in South London, with a diagnosis of ASD were analyzed. Natural language processing was employed to identify mentions of bullying and suicidality in the free text fields of adolescents' clinical records. Cox regression analysis was employed to investigate the longitudinal relationship between bullying and suicidality outcomes. Reported experience of bullying in the first month of clinical contact was associated with an increased risk suicidality over the follow‐up period (hazard ratio = 1.82; 95% confidence interval = 1.28–2.59). In addition, female gender, psychosis, affective disorder diagnoses, and higher intellectual ability were all associated with suicidality at follow‐up. This study is the first to demonstrate the strength of longitudinal associations between bullying and suicidality in a clinical population of adolescents with ASD, using automated approaches to detect key life events within clinical records. Our findings provide support for identifying and dealing with bullying in schools, and for antibullying strategy's incorporation into wider suicide prevention programs for young people with ASD. Autism Res 2020, 13: 988‐997. © 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: We investigated the relationship between bullying and suicidality in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We examined the clinical records of adolescents (aged 13–18 years old) with ASD in South London who were receiving treatment from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. We found that if they reported being bullied in the first month after they were first seen by mental health services, they were nearly twice as likely to go on to develop suicidal thoughts or behaviors.
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spelling pubmed-86479222021-12-20 Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder Holden, Rachel Mueller, Joanne McGowan, John Sanyal, Jyoti Kikoler, Maxim Simonoff, Emily Velupillai, Sumithra Downs, Johnny Autism Res Research Articles For typically developing adolescents, being bullied is associated with increased risk of suicidality. Although adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at increased risk of both bullying and suicidality, there is very little research that examines the extent to which an experience of being bullied may increase suicidality within this specific population. To address this, we conducted a retrospective cohort study to investigate the longitudinal association between experiencing bullying and suicidality in a clinical population of 680 adolescents with ASD. Electronic health records of adolescents (13–17 years), using mental health services in South London, with a diagnosis of ASD were analyzed. Natural language processing was employed to identify mentions of bullying and suicidality in the free text fields of adolescents' clinical records. Cox regression analysis was employed to investigate the longitudinal relationship between bullying and suicidality outcomes. Reported experience of bullying in the first month of clinical contact was associated with an increased risk suicidality over the follow‐up period (hazard ratio = 1.82; 95% confidence interval = 1.28–2.59). In addition, female gender, psychosis, affective disorder diagnoses, and higher intellectual ability were all associated with suicidality at follow‐up. This study is the first to demonstrate the strength of longitudinal associations between bullying and suicidality in a clinical population of adolescents with ASD, using automated approaches to detect key life events within clinical records. Our findings provide support for identifying and dealing with bullying in schools, and for antibullying strategy's incorporation into wider suicide prevention programs for young people with ASD. Autism Res 2020, 13: 988‐997. © 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: We investigated the relationship between bullying and suicidality in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We examined the clinical records of adolescents (aged 13–18 years old) with ASD in South London who were receiving treatment from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. We found that if they reported being bullied in the first month after they were first seen by mental health services, they were nearly twice as likely to go on to develop suicidal thoughts or behaviors. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2020-03-21 2020-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8647922/ /pubmed/32198982 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.2292 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Holden, Rachel
Mueller, Joanne
McGowan, John
Sanyal, Jyoti
Kikoler, Maxim
Simonoff, Emily
Velupillai, Sumithra
Downs, Johnny
Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
title Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
title_full Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
title_fullStr Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
title_full_unstemmed Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
title_short Investigating Bullying as a Predictor of Suicidality in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
title_sort investigating bullying as a predictor of suicidality in a clinical sample of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8647922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32198982
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.2292
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