UCLA

Suicide is a leading cause of death among youth and young adults; however, effective intervention and prevention strategies are limited in their generalizability and applicability to acutely at-risk populations. To successfully develop strategies to decrease suicide prevalence across childhood, suicidality must be contextualized using frameworks such as ecodevelopmental theory and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model which situate suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) within individual, family, community, and cultural systems. One salient system associated with STBs is the Juvenile Legal System (JLS), where individuals experience markedly higher rates of STBs and related risk factors. However, temporal associations between engagement in STBs and JLS involvement are unclear, including their shared risk factors. This dissertation consists of two studies designed to address these shortcomings and examine the relationship between STBs and JLS involvement, with the goal of illuminating the pathways between them as well as the factors contributing to each of their occurrence.Study I prosecuted the relationship between JLS involvement and STBs across development with consideration of related risk and protective factors. Propensity score matching capitalized on 2,426 adolescents enrolled in a sub study of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study to test the association of police contact at 10-13 years-old with suicidal outcomes (i.e., self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt) two years later, covarying for age, education, race-ethnicity, sex/gender, discrimination, adverse childhood events (ACEs), and familism. After adjusting for demographic, experiential, and family-level factors identified as potential confounders of this relationship, police contact in preadolescence did not significantly predict suicidal outcomes two years later. However, girls were more likely to report lifetime self-harm compared to boys and Black youth were less likely to report lifetime suicidal ideation compared to White youth. In addition, lower familism predicted self-harm and suicidal ideation two years later.Study II utilized qualitative methods to retrospectively explore the nature, timing, and consequences of individuals’ JLS involvement and engagement in STBs across development. Temporal sequencing of events was illuminated with collaborative mapping of events onto shared visual timelines. While some individuals experienced suicidality prior to legal system contact, often rooted in early trauma, unstable or harmful family relationships, or peer-related stressors, others experienced suicidality because of JLS involvement—particularly during arrest, detention, or other coercive system encounters. Across individuals, mutually reinforcing factors intensified both STBs and JLS involvement including hopelessness, implicit/risk taking behaviors, dehumanization, sense of social capital, and discrimination. These experiences further propagated cyclical patterns in which system involvement heightened STBs, and engagement in STBs heightened vulnerability to further JLS contact.Results from these two studies increment knowledge about the interplay between JLS involvement and STB engagement, as well as the common factors that increase risk for both. These findings provide critical insights into specific psychosocial targets for intervention (e.g., discriminatory experiences, trauma history, hopelessness) and implicate sensitive periods (i.e., preadolescence) that should guide intervention delivery, as well as where interventions are most effectively enacted across JLS contact points (e.g., arrest vs. courts vs. community supervision). Future research should prioritize large, longitudinal studies to better map JLS involvement and STBs temporally for more generalizable and high acuity populations and to elucidate additional factors contributing to the presentation of both across childhood and adolescence.