Examining the Relationship between Perfectionism and Suicidal Thoughts and Attempt in Adolescent - A Review Study

Suicide is one of the most complex human phenomena, which according to the fifth diagnostic manual of mental disorders (DSM-5), is defined as a behavior in which a person commits suicide with the aim of killing himself, and suicide without the intention of killing himself and usually to get attention and points (1). It is from others, it is distinguished (3). According to the statistics published by the health organization, about 1 million people die each year due to suicide, which is called suicide leading to death. But if we want to consider the statistics related to suicide attempts, usually the statistics of suicide attempts are 20 to 50 times higher than suicides leading to death (6). In justifying this statistic, it can be said that since women commit suicide about 2 to 3 times more than men, suicide leads to death in men 2 to 3 times more than women, so in societies where women commit suicide more, the rate of suicide is Slaughter of pigs can lead to death many times more than suicide (9). People with perfectionist traits have ambitious, vague and unattainable goals. Perfectionism is a motivational component and includes the individual's efforts to achieve the perfect self. These people are very precise and critical (14), so that they cannot accept their faults, mistakes and failures in different aspects. In addition, it has been found that perfectionism is related to a wide range of mental disorders related to suicide, such as obsession (15), anxiety (16), depression (17) and bipolar disorder (18). Therefore, it seems that perfectionism can be related to suicide. Previous studies have also shown that perfectionism has a significant relationship with imposter syndrome and suicidal thoughts, that the higher the level of perfectionism in a person, the more likely that person feels unworthy and has suicidal thoughts (19). Also, it seems that perfectionism is more prevalent in girls than in men, and media and advertisements, by portraying successful and attractive people, have also played an important role in increasing perfectionism among different people, especially young people and teenagers (19). Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between perfectionism and suicidal thoughts and behavior among teenagers.

The method of this study is descriptive and according to the implementation method, it is a type of review articles. Review studies are a type of qualitative research that is used to investigate phenomena and identify important categories based on previous research sources. This method is useful when research sources are rich in the field of the phenomenon in question. In such a situation, by using review studies, the underlying categories of the studied phenomenon can be identified, classified and summarized.
The research community includes all the articles with the English keywords Perfectionism, perfect, sense of perfection along with suicide, suicide attempt, suicide ideation, self-harm, self-injury in foreign databases Scopus, Springer, Web of Science, Google-Scholar, Science Direct and the keywords of perfectionism, perfectionism, perfectionism, perfectionism and perfectionism along with suicide, suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide, self-harm, self-injury and self-harm in adolescents in SID, Normags, Magiran, Civilica, ISC, Google -Scholar, which was published between 2003 and 2023. In order to select relevant studies, the Prism guide was used for review studies (22). Initially, 241 articles were selected using the above keywords in internal and external search engines. After that, 187 studies were excluded due to non-relevance, 29 due to duplicates in search engines. From the remaining 25 studies, after fully reading the articles and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 11 more studies were excluded and 14 studies were selected for the final sample selection

The results of this study showed that out of 14 studies conducted, 5 studies were conducted in Canada, 3 studies were conducted in America, 2 studies were conducted in Israel and China, South Korea, Hungary, and England each conducted 1 study. Also, only three studies were related to before 2000, 3 studies were between 2000 and 2010, and most of the studies were related to the last decade and 5 studies were related to the last 5 years. Also, out of the 14 selected studies, most of the studies used the Children and Adolescents Perfectionism Questionnaire (CAPS) to measure perfectionism (9 studies out of 14 studies). However, different tools have been used to measure suicidal thoughts and behavior. Among the conducted studies, 5 studies have less than 100 participants, 5 studies have between 100 and 200, three have between 200 and 1000 and only one study has more than 1000 subjects.

The results of the research showed that there is a very strong possibility that perfectionism is related to suicidal thoughts and it seems that perfectionism can increase the possibility of suicidal behavior in teenagers by intensifying mental disorders, especially depression, despair, eating and sleeping disorders in teenagers, but not all types of perfectionism seem to be negative. Limited studies have shown that hard-working perfectionist teenagers show very low levels of suicidal thoughts and behavior, so it can be said that perfectionism that is passive and accompanied by procrastination increases the likelihood of suicidal thoughts and behavior. Gives. Therefore, in order to reduce the suicide rate and prevent and treat suicidal people, health professionals should pay more attention to their perfectionism, so that in addition to improving the mental health of adolescents and the possibility of developing their talents, the society also does not lose its dynamic and youthful force. be your own development.