Having a teenage mother can double a person's risk of committing suicide, according to a new study.

Swedish researchers found that babies born to women in their teens were twice as likely to kill themselves in later life than those whose mothers gave birth in their 20s.

SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-4511492,00.html

Press Association

Friday September 24, 2004

The connection could be due to poor parenting and the social and economic stresses that accompany young motherhood, say the investigators.

Low birthweight was also associated with increased suicide risk.

In addition, the researchers found that individuals born into large families with four or more older brothers and sisters were more likely to attempt suicide.

Dr Danuta Wasserman, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, led the study which followed the fortunes of more than 700,000 people born between 1973 and 1980.

The researchers monitored the group until the end of 1999 and assessed the proportion of attempted and actual suicides between 10 and 26 years of age.

A total of 397 men and 166 women killed themselves, while almost 2,000 men and more than 4,700 women attempted suicide.

Analysis showed that babies weighing less than two kilograms at birth or born to teenage mothers were more than twice as likely to commit suicide as those weighing 3.5 kilograms whose mothers were aged 20 to 29 at the time of delivery.

Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers said: "Teenage motherhood proved an important predictor for suicide and suicide attempt. Young motherhood could possibly be associated with an adverse psychosocial home environment, inadequate child-rearing practices, the stress burden of single motherhood, and consequently superimposed long-term socio-economic problems, which can exacerbate the risk of the offspring's mental ill-health and risk of suicidal behaviour."

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