(PS11-42) Examining Understanding of Death and Suicide Among Preteens and Adolescents

Suicide is a leading cause of death for youth in the United States, and recent trends indicate that preteen youth are dying by suicide at an alarming rate. Despite renewed focus and research, it is unclear how children conceptualize and understand suicide. This has made it difficult to determine if traditional approaches to suicide assessment, which typically presume respondents’ clear understanding of death and suicide, are developmentally appropriate for younger children. This poster will present findings from a study examining age-related differences in understanding of death and suicide. This project is IRB-approved: data collection will commence in March 2024, and we anticipate enrolling a substantial portion of the sample prior to November 2024. We will test the hypothesis that preteens (8-11 years), compared to adolescents (12-17 years), will be more likely to endorse functioning after death (e.g., cognizance after death). Self-report data on death conceptualizations will be collected from a community sample of preteen and adolescent youth aged 8 to 17 (n=100). This study will utilize a new measure developed by our team, the Continuity of Functioning After Death Interview (CoFAD), to assess participant judgments about the continuation of biological and psychological functioning following death. Participants will be presented with two vignettes about death during the interviewer-administered task. These vignettes are brief (under 1 minute) and describe the death of a fictional character. Additionally, the cause of death varies between narratives (suicide vs. physical illness), allowing us to examine whether the nature of death impacts death conceptualizations. Following the presentation of each vignette, the participant will be asked to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with statements about the fictional character who died using a Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree; 5 = Strongly Agree). These statements examine different aspects of functioning after death, including biological (e.g., “Robin’s brain still works”), psychological (e.g., “Robin feels sleepy”), perceptual (e.g., “Robin can hear things around them”), and epistemic (e.g., “Robin knows they are not alive”). We will control for variables identified by prior research that may be associated with understanding of death (e.g., exposure to death and religiosity). Findings presented in this poster will offer a foundational understanding of child death conceptualizations needed to create developmentally appropriate suicide assessments.