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Early-life influences on suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and suicide mortality: a life-course perspective to inform prevention

Project description

Unravelling early-life factors linked to suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide

Around 700 000 people take their lives every year – one person every 40 seconds. More and more studies suggest that ‘early-life’ events, those occurring before or around birth, can influence later susceptibility to suicide. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the LIFESPAN project will investigate the potential link between birth order, parental age, family/sibling size, birth weight, and birth length on suicide, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in the general population. This will be accomplished with meta-analyses of longitudinal studies and longitudinal mediation analysis techniques relying on growth curve modelling to identify specific mediating pathways (targetable with new preventive interventions) linking early-life factors and suicide risk.

Objective

Suicide is a major public health concern and leading cause of death worldwide. Suicidal ideation and attempts, especially
among youths, are of particular concern because of their associations with suicide, poor health, educational and employment
outcomes. The World Health Organisation European Mental Health Action Plan has ranked suicide prevention among the
highest priorities on the global public health agenda for 2020. While recognising the importance of immediate precipitating
factors (unemployment, relationship problems), studies worldwide are showing that early-life events, occurring before or
around birth, can influence later susceptibility to suicide. The LIFESPAN project adopts a life-course perspective to examine
the early-life influences (birth order, parental age, family/sibling size, birth weight, birth length) on suicide, suicidal ideation
and suicide attempts in the general population. It comprises 3 complementary objectives: (1) to summarise available studies
about the longitudinal relations between early-life influences and suicide mortality by applying meta-analysis, the statistical
approach most informative for policymakers, allowing to go beyond the heterogeneity of existing studies; (2) to investigate
the associations between early-life influences and suicidal ideation and attempts in adolescence and young adulthood with
data from 3 longitudinal population-based cohorts (from Canada and France; up to 25 years follow-up); (3) to identify specific
mediating pathways (targetable with new preventive interventions) linking early-life factors and suicide risk, using advances
longitudinal mediation analysis techniques relying on growth curve modelling. By shedding new light on the role of early-life
influence on suicidality, this project will contribute to the H2020 aim of “promoting healthy ageing and personalised health
care [which] will enable to better understand the determinants of health, keep the population healthier, preserve quality of
life”.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2017

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITE DE BORDEAUX
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 232 160,40
Address
PLACE PEY BERLAND 35
33000 BORDEAUX
France

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Region
Nouvelle-Aquitaine Aquitaine Gironde
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 232 160,40

Partners (1)

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