Relationship between parental bonding, traumatic experiences, post-traumatic symptomatology and individual's suicidality

There is very little examination of factors that can possibly determine gender specific suicidality in Lithuania, even though gender differences in this theme and suicide rates in Lithuania show the need of this kind of studies. The aim of this study – to evaluate how maternal and paternal bonding, lifetime possible traumatic events and experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms are related with individual’s suicidality by gender. Participants: 100 (50 men and 50 women) 18 – 70 years old (M = 40,76; SD = 12,31) individuals with a mental disorder from 3 organizations that provide mental health services and 100 (50 men and 50 women) 18 – 41 years old, (M = 21,45, SD = 3,12) students from Vilnius university. Instruments: form consisting of suicidality index from attitudes towards suicide questionnaire (ATTS), parental-bonding instrument (PBI), lifetime events checklist (LEC), trauma screening questionnaire (TSQ) and demographics, study design– correlational study. Main results: suicidal male students tended to estimate higher scores on their father’s athoritarian parenting style than non-suicidal male students (M = 2,05, SD = 1,73 and M = 3,23, SD = 1,69 respectively, U = 153, Z = -1,965, p = 0,049); both suicidal female students and suicidal females with mental disorder tended to refer more possible traumatic life experiences than non-suicidal ones M = 4,34, SD = 2,75 for suicidals and M = 5,95, SD = 2,65 for non-suicidals; t = -2,067, df = 48, p = 0,044 in female students sample; M = 5,12, SD = 2,65 for suicidals and M = 6,97, SD = 2,56 for non-suicidals; t = -2,348, df = 48, p = 0,023 in women with mental disorder sample). Conclusion: in this research male students’ suicidality was associated with their views on father as authoritarian and females’ suicidality was associated with more lifetime traumatic events