Comfort expressing emotions and suicidal thoughts among Asian Americans

What is it about?

We examined the relationship between comfort expressing emotions and suicidal ideation, comparing different Asian American subgroups to each other and to White emerging adults. While there were no ethnic differences in suicide ideation severity, we found that lower comfort expressing emotions was associated with higher severity of suicide ideation. This relationship was stronger among White than among East Asian and South Asian American emerging adults, but did not differ among Asian subgroups. Hopelessness and depressive symptoms explained the relationship between lower comfort expressing emotions and suicide ideation among White, East Asian, and South Asian American emerging adults, but not among Southeast Asian American emerging adults.

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Why is it important?

This study suggests a link between lower comfort expressing emotions and suicide ideation severity and examines this link differentially by Asian American subgroup, with comparison to White emerging adults. Asian Americans are underrepresented in youth suicide research in the US, and most studies of suicide ideation among Asian Americans do not distinguish among subgroups. This study thus contributes to an increasing understanding of factors that may be related to risk for suicidal thoughts among different groups of Asian Americans, with a particular focus on emotion expressivity.

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