Psychological stress in teenagers as a predictor of suicidal risk: gender aspects of the problem

The paper analyzes the results of a study of psychological stress as a predictor of suicidal risk in adolescents in a gender perspective. It reviews the data of Russian and foreign studies of suicidal behavior in boys and girls and provides the reasons for the gender paradox. The data demonstrates that there are gender differences in the indicators of psychological stress in adolescents. In particular, girls on average have a higher level of depression and of the physiological component of the phenomenon under consideration. Moreover, the dominant mental state of 15-18 year old adolescents is characterized by a low level of activity and an average level of calmness, arousal, and affective tone stability; the calmness and the affective tone stability are higher in boys. Girls are more prone to choose all the basic strategies of coping behavior: problem solving, support seeking, and avoidance. The structure of relationship between indicators of psychological stress and suicidal behavior is different in boys and girls. The study concludes that projective methods can be used for screening, as they allow to identify a risk group among adolescents, for example, depression prone adolescents. Boys who consider projective situations hopeless have a higher level of depression compared to a similar group of girls.