Suicide among children in Norway

Suicide among children below 16 years of age occurs infrequently, but in Norway this problem has been growing. Suicide ideations and threats from children are more often registered in clinical settings. There is a lack of knowledge concerning this issue i n the international community. There is also uncertainty regarding the validity of suicide registration. In addition, there is reason to believe that families are not offered sufficient help after the sudden, unexpected death of a child. The aim of this s tudy is to gather knowledge about suicide in the youngest age group in order to use this information to improve the evaluation of suicide threats, the detection of suicide risks, and the further development of specific preventive measures. Another aim is to describe what is seen as adequate assistance and compare it to the assistance that is given to parents after the child’s death. Information will mainly be collected by means of interviews with parents of children who have committed suicide and with p arents of children who have died in accidents Method 1. Collect information (death certificates) from Statistics Norway for an overview of registered suicides in the age group from 0 through 15 yeas of age in Norway during the last decade. 2. Retrospecti ve evaluation of the child (“psychological autopsy”). This includes information from the medical autopsy, police rapports, information from helping agencies and interviews with the parents (siblings and teachers with parental consent). (N estimated to 50 ). 3. Collect information about child accidents, and for comparison purposes, there will be “psychological autopsies” of the children who died by accident in the same period (N=50). 4. Data will be collected through research instruments also used in epi demiological studies. Average children and adolescents from these studies will serve as comparison groups for the suicide and the accident group.