Impact of gender and parents' marital status on adolescents' suicidal ideation

This study investigated the effect of gender and parents' marital status on adolescents' suicidal ideation in a sample of Grade 8 and Grade 9 students (mean age = 14.12 years) in Singapore. Two hundred and seventy-one (149 boys and 122 girls) students completed the junior high school version of the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (SIQ-JR) and a short demographic questionnaire. Consistent with our hypothesis, the 2 (Gender) x 2 (Parents' marital status) ANOVA yielded a statistically significant interaction effect as expected. Specifically, tests of simple effects reveal that adolescent boys from single-parent families were found to be significantly higher on suicidal ideation compared with adolescent boys from two-parent families. This difference was not found among adolescent girls--adolescent girls from single-parent and two-parent families did not differ significantly on suicidal ideation. Being a boy in a single-parent home environment may increase one's risk for endorsing clinically significant suicidal ideation.