Emerging Adults With a Suicide Attempt History Text More Emotionally With Peers than Family Members

Abstract

Emotional communication is central to strong interpersonal relationships and mental health. For emerging adults, much of their interpersonal communication happens via texting, but we know little about how and with whom their emotional texting occurs. Understanding these patterns may be especially critical for emerging adults experiencing mental health crises (e.g., suicidality). This study examined how the emotional tone of texts (sent and received) varies based on texting partner (i.e., peers, which includes friends and significant others, vs. family) and within-person suicide risk. Participants were 27 emerging adults with prior, non-lethal suicide attempt(s). Linguistic Inquiry Word Count was used to label 75,928 texts. While there was variation in the specific interactions, results overall indicated that participants exchanged texts containing all emotion category words at greater rates with peers (vs. family), and this pattern generally held across within-person suicide risk level. Implications for suicide prevention/intervention efforts are discussed.