To examine whether there is an association between students self-reported suicide attempts and non-suicidal self-injury and exposure to suicidal behaviour among friends, family members or within school communities.
A cross-sectional analysis of a nationally representative health and well-being survey of 8500 New Zealand high school students conducted from March through November 2012. Students' self-reported suicide attempts and repeated non-suicidal self-injury was examined in relation to student reports of self-harming behaviour among friends and family as well as data from school administrators of completed suicides within the school community.
Almost 1 in 20 (4.5%) students reported a suicide attempt in the last 12 months and 7.9% reported repeated non-suicidal self-injury in the last 12 months. The risk of both suicide attempts and repeated non-suicidal self-injury was highest among females, students from homes with economic deprivation and among students reporting an episode of low mood in the previous 12 months. Students exposed to suicide attempts or completed suicide among friends and/or family members were at increased risk of reporting attempted suicide and repeated non-suicidal self-injury in the last year. There was no association between completed suicide in school community and students self-reported suicide attempts or repeated non-suicidal self-injury.
Low mood and exposure to suicide attempts of friends and family members are associated with suicide attempts and repeated non-suicidal self-injury in New Zealand high school students. This research highlights importance of supporting adolescents with low mood and exposed to suicide of friends and family.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 27. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 September 2025.
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#1,808,537
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Outputs from Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
#294
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#26,793
of 362,196 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
#7
of 40 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,779,198 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,936 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 40 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its contemporaries.
