Frequent Household Moves Raise Kids' Suicide Risk

June 2 -- MONDAY, June 1 (HealthDay News) -- Children from families who pick up and move often may be at higher odds for suicide, a Danish study finds.

In fact, researchers found that the more often a family moved, the more likely it was that a child would attempt or complete suicide.

Despite an increasingly mobile society, "little research has addressed the influence of mobility on children's psychosocial well-being," noted Dr. Ping Qin, associate professor at the University of Aarhus National Center for Register-Based Research.

In the study, Qin and her colleagues were able to get information on all children born in Denmark between 1978 and 1995. Hospital records showed that 4,160 of those children attempted suicide between 11 and 17 years of age, and 79 of those attempts ended in a completed suicide. The researchers then compared each child involved in a suicide attempt with 30 other children of the same sex and age.

The comparison found what the researchers called a "dose-response" relationship -- the number of childhood suicide attempts rose with the number of changes of residence. Among those who attempted suicide, 55.2 percent of the children moved more than three times, compared to 32 percent of those in the control group. And 7.4 percent of children who attempted suicide had moved more than 10 times, compared to 1.9 percent of those in the control group.

A change in residence is just one of many factors that can upset a child enough so that he or she considers suicide, Qin acknowledged. "Suicide is a comprehensive tragedy that can result from many factors," she said. A number of studies have shown that psychiatric problems -- affecting either children or parents -- and a family history of suicide are also important risk factors, Qin said.

Still, moving involves "the breakdown of connections with peers, discontinuation of group activities, distress and worries related to the new environment" that are psychologically distressing, said the study, reported in the June issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.