The Interplay Between Family Dynamics, Culture, and Attempted Suicide Among Latina Teens

Background and Purpose: Research has confirmed high rates of suicidal behaviors by U.S. Latina adolescents, and explanations for this epidemiological pattern often foreground cultural values. Much of the scholarship defines culture as shared sets of values that drive individual behavior. Although this approach accurately portrays one aspect of culture, the reliance on this definition has resulted in the reification of culture as an immutable, bounded, and discrete system. This presentation provides an interactionist perspective of culture to explore the family and cultural context within which Latina teens’ suicidal actions are situated. Culture is defined as a dynamic process in which individuals actively draw on cultural elements to interpret and find meaning in everyday life. Methods: The data presented draw from individual qualitative interviews conducted with 10 parent-child units with a teen suicide attempter (6 mother-daughter dyads, 1 father-daughter dyad, and 3 mother-daughter-father triads) and 10 child-parent units with an adolescent with no lifetime history of suicidal behavior (9 mother-daughter dyads and 1 mother-daughter-father triad). The overall number of participants totaled 44. The average age of girls was 15.7 years. Mothers and fathers had a mean age of 40 years. Research participants identified with seven Hispanic subgroups: Colombian, Dominican, Ecuadoran, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Venezuelan. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) was used to systematically examine empirical patterns across cases and assess how different configurations of themes related to the occurrence of a suicide attempt. Results: Three major themes were identified as salient in Latinas’ narratives of their decisions to attempt suicide: subjective distress, interpersonal discord, and emotional isolation. In 9 of the 10 families with an adolescent suicide attempter, all themes were present, yet some themes were not exclusive to families with an adolescent suicide attempter. In families with an adolescent with no history of suicidal behavior, themes of subjective distress and interpersonal discord configured in different ways, but emotional isolation never emerged in the narratives of non-attempting adolescents. Across participants, interpersonal discord revealed individualist tensions within patterns of family dynamics. In lieu of interpersonal dynamics that emphasized a unified sense of family harmony and interdependent collaboration, teens and their parents expressed conflicting and often contradictory cultural conceptions of the family. When such experiences were compounded by emotional isolation, the collapse of relational ties that might otherwise help to ground the youth’s sense of place in her world left her feeling alienated and shaped her decision to attempt suicide. Conclusions and Implications: These results are consistent with the extant literature that emphasizes the primacy of social isolation in shaping decisions to attempt suicide, suggesting that processes that contribute to suicidal behavior might be similar despite diverse cultural contexts. By attending to an interactionist perspective, it guides against the tendency for researchers to assume which cultural values are salient to the worldview of research participants. It can also highlight when acculturative conflict between an adolescent and her parents is perceived as a normal process of development or when psychological suffering is intensified as a result of cultural conflict.