WITHDRAWN: How Does Parental Monitoring Work in Suicidal Ideation?

Research Aims

(1) To identify a mediation effect of depression between social support and suicidal ideation among U.S. adolescents. (2) To test a moderation effect of parental monitoring in the mediation model.

Background

Although research has documented the positive impact of social support and parental monitoring, and negative impact of depression on suicidal ideation, the interactive effects of them have only been minimally explored. We tested mediation, moderation, and moderated mediation effects of social support, depression, and parenting monitoring on suicidal ideation.

Methods

Participants: The current study used the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health data. For the current study, young adults aged 12 to 17 years (M = 14.52) old were selected. Among the 14,272 respondents of the current study, 7,288 (51.1%) were male and 6,984 (48.9%) were female. The majority of participants were Caucasians (54.0%) and there were other races including Hispanics (21.8%), African Americans (12.9%), and etc.

Measures: The social support variable was created from the five items (α = .89), including information on who the respondents would talk with about a serious problem: no one; parent/guardian; boyfriend/girlfriend; other adults; and some other person. The suicidal ideation variable was measured by asking three questions (α = .85) related to a desire to die. The depression variable included nine observed items (α = .74) related to depressive symptoms including sadness, emptiness, changes in appetite, and low energy. To measure parental monitoring, seven Likert-scale questions were asked (α = .70) that include limiting the amount of time watching TV and amount of time going out with friends on school nights.

Analyses: We used PROCESS macro that can analyze mediation and moderated mediation models using bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. The pick-a-point was used which is one of the most popular methods to probe the interaction effect of parental monitoring in a linear model.

Results

In the mediation model, social support was positively related to depression (b = -.05, p < .001) and depression positively predicted suicidal ideation (b = .77, p < .001) while controlling for gender. Aldo, there was an evidence of an indirect effect of social support on suicidal ideation through depression (CI [-.02, -.01]). In the moderation model, the results showed that adolescents who received higher levels of parental monitoring tended to have relatively lower levels of suicidal ideation when their depression levels were increased. In the moderated mediation model, the results showed that the mediation effect of depression between social support and suicidal ideation varied depending on the levels of parental monitoring. However, there was not much difference in the indirect effect between low, moderate, and high level of parental monitoring group.

Conclusions

It is recommended that increasing social support-based support should not exclude the use of parental monitoring when working with adolescents to help them with psychological problems, such as depression and suicide. Also, depression should be regarded as a significant risk factor for suicidal ideation considering its direct and mediation effect on suicidal ideation.