Suicide ideation and social desirability among school-aged young people

A mixed male–female sample of 950 school-aged adolescents, corresponding to 10% of the young population aged 15–19 living in a rural district of Northeast Italy, was investigated with self-reported questionnaires about the links between social desirability and suicide ideation. On the whole 30.6% of females and 23.9% of males reported suicidal ideation of some degree, with 5% in both genders reporting suicide ideation of a high degree (i.e. quite a lot/extremely often). Those who scored higher at the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS) reported lower levels of psychiatric symptoms on the Symptom checklist 90R (SCL-90R), with the “denial” subscale of the SDS resulting specifically associated to lower scores on SCL-90R items measuring hopelessness, thoughts about death and suicide ideation. The personality traits measured by the Marlowe–Crowne SDS, such as defensiveness, denial and self-deception, might be conceived as a protection against psychiatric disorders and suicide ideation.