Factors of suicidal behavior formation in adolescents

The article examines the problem of the formation of suicidal behavior in adolescents in modern society, depending on social, personal and psychopathological factors. There is a growing trend in statistical indicators of adolescent suicidality, which includes both internal and external forms of suicidal behavior. The features of suicidal behavior are highlighted, taking into account non-pathological and pathological changes in the adolescent’s self-awareness system, the presence of suicidal and antisuicidal factors, the specifics of thinking processes, perception, emotional-volitional sphere, critical and predictive abilities. Taking into account these literary sources, the immaturity of inter-functional connections in the self-awareness system characteristic of adolescents is determined, due to the lack of sufficient life experience and leading to a state of maladaptation with limited options for resolving a subjectively difficult situation for a teenager. The similarity of the phenomenology of some changes in mental functions in adolescents who have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder with psychopathological disorders in mentally ill adolescents is stated. The author focuses on ideational manifestations of suicidal behavior and their place in the differential diagnosis of mental disorders. Examples from clinical practice are given, such as postmortem forensic psychiatric examinations of minors. An assumption is formulated about the algorithm of making a suicidal decision by a teenager at different levels of an altered system of self-awareness, which can either be narrowed due to the natural immaturity of inter-functional connections, the prevalence of suicidal and weak anti-suicidal factors, or distorted at the stage of meaning formation and/or self-regulation. It is concluded that taking into account the above aspects of suicidal behavior in adolescents can help improve the effectiveness of preventive and therapeutic diagnostic work.