Mexican-origin Adolescents’ Autonomic Stress Response During Peer Exclusion Associated With an Increased Risk for Prospective Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors

• In Event: Peer Exclusion in Childhood and Adolescence: Multi-level Mechanisms and Risk for Depression

Abstract

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth in the United States and the rates are continuing to rise. Unfortunately, national policy efforts to combat this increase in youth deaths by suicide have made little difference. Suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) disproportionately affect female adolescents, and youth of color, including Latino youth. To date, there have been few longitudinal studies of STB in Latino adolescents, thus, many of the prospective risk factors for suicidality in these populations are not well understood. Additionally, there is limited research which has examined the neurobiological predictors of STB in community or clinical adolescent samples across all genders and ethnicities. Given this imminent and intensifying public health crisis, additional investigations are needed to examine and understand both proximal and distal factors related to the increase in adolescent STB, especially objective biological correlates.

The present work evaluated how Mexican-origin adolescents’ basal and acute autonomic nervous system (ANS) physiology may reveal autonomic patterns of responding to peer exclusion that are associated with (1) prior history of STB and (2) subsequent reports of STB in Mexican-origin adolescents.

Based on past research, we predicted that participants’ lower basal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) would be associated with prior STB and prospective STB 30 months following the initial visit. Additionally, we hypothesized that youth with greater skin conductance responses (SCR) during a peer exclusion task would be more likely to report STB at follow-up.

In 229 Mexican-origin youth (M = 17.16, 110 females), SCR and RSA were recorded at baseline and during Cyberball, a peer exclusion task. Sixty-two (27%) youth had histories of STB at the time of the physiological assessment. Over the next 30 months, STB were assessed another 4 times; 45 (20%) youth reported subsequent STB.

Participants with a history of endorsing lifetime STB had overall significantly lower SCR across baseline and task (M = 1.87, SD = 1.65) (i.e., hypoactivation) during Cyberball peer exclusion, compared to participants without a history of STB (M = 2.68, SD = 2.15). A path analysis revealed that participants who evinced both lower baseline SCR and RSA were more likely to endorse subsequent STB. Additionally, higher SCR during the peer exclusion task was related to a 37% increase in odds of endorsing subsequent STB and higher task RSA during peer exclusion was predictive of more than a twofold increase in odds of reporting subsequent STB (see Table 1).

The present work is the first longitudinal study to measure autonomic physiological responses to peer exclusion as it relates to suicidality in an exclusively Mexican-origin sample of adolescents. Our demonstration that sympathetic hypoactivation was related to endorsing a lifetime history of STB in Mexican-origin adolescents is a novel replication of prior findings with adult samples in the adolescent literature. Additionally, our study is the first to prospectively show that autonomic tonic hypoactivity and sympathetic dominance (i.e., higher SNS activity paired with minimal RSA withdrawal) in response to peer exclusion predict greater likelihood of subsequent STB in adolescents.

Authors

• Lauren C. Gonzalves, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• David G Weissman

• Richard Whitney Robins, University of California - Davis

• Amanda E Guyer, University of California - Davis

• Paul David Hastings, University of California - Davis