Thoughts of feeling life is not worth living could be the initial stage of a continuum that might end in a suicide.

Psychiatric morbidity is quite prevalent among adolescents and has been associated with suicidal ideation.

Our aim was to test the association between thoughts that life is not worth living and psychiatric morbidity in a sample of Greek adolescents.

A two-phase cross sectional study of 5614 adolescents aged 16–18 years old attending 25 senior high schools in Greece. A stratified random sample of 2431 subjects was selected for a detailed interview at the second phase. Psychiatric morbidity and thoughts of life is not worth living were assessed with the revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R). Odds ratios adjusted for age and sex were computed for the association between such thoughts and CIS-R scores.

3,72% of the adolescents (girls:5,11%, boys:2,36%, p < 0.001) reported thoughts of feeling life is not worth living in the week before interview. Psychiatric morbidity correlated significantly with those thoughts (OR = 1.16, 95% Confidence Intervals: 1.14–1.19). The level of psychiatric morbidity was strongly associated with such thoughts with higher levels of distress showing a greater association (Table 1).

[Table 1]

Policies aiming at preventing the overall burden of psychiatric disease in adolescence may reduce the frequency of thoughts that life is not worth living, which could eventually lead to a decrease in completed suicides.