Teens who move a lot have twice suicide risk

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31551946/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

By Linda Carroll
msnbc.com contributor
updated 11:35 a.m. ET, Fri., June 26, 2009

By the time she was 18, Cheryl Fike had moved nine times because of her father's job. For Fike, every move was sad, distressing and alienating.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, not again,’ when they’d tell me we had to move,” says Fike, a 52-year old engineer from Galt, Calif. “I was shy and reserved so it was hard for me to make friends. I mostly spent time with my horse and each time I’d worry that we were going to move somewhere where I couldn’t keep her. It made me totally depressed. I think those moves are part of the reason I have panic attacks now.”

Psychologists have known for years that moves can be distressing for kids. But a new study shows that the impact on some adolescents may be far more devastating than anyone thought. The study, published in the Archives of Psychiatry, found that kids aged 11 to 17 were twice as likely to attempt suicide if their families moved three or more times compared to those who had never moved.

And, if the family moved more than 10 times, the children were four times as likely to attempt suicide compared to those who had never moved.

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These days, more families are being forced to move because of the troubled economy, says Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist who specializes in family issues at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

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Because they see moving as necessary, parents sometimes can fail to see how significant a move can be in a child’s life, says Patrick Tolan, a professor of psychology and director of the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Parents can lessen the impact if they include the child in discussions of the anticipated move and give them an opportunity to see the new house and neighborhood before moving, he adds.

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