Andrea Baldelli
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Psychology·Early-career
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children aged 10 to 12, and girls report suicidal thoughts and behaviors far more often than boys. Exposure to threat in childhood, such as violence in the home or community, raises this risk, but not every child who faces threat goes on to struggle.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
suicide prevention
suicidal thoughts and behaviors
suicidal ideation
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Refine questionnaires, interviews and behavioral tasks that measure social motivation and suicidal thoughts and behaviors so they are valid for a diverse group of preteen girls aged 8 to 11.
- Test whether maladaptive social motivation (strong avoidance of social failure plus low effort to connect) predicts new suicidal thoughts in preteen girls, especially those with early puberty, using 12-month follow-up and twice-daily phone surveys.
- Test whether childhood threat exposure raises suicide risk in preteen girls through maladaptive social motivation, and whether early puberty strengthens this pathway, using measures of hormones in saliva.
- Characterize social motivation in adolescents using self-report, brain-imaging and behavioral measures from two cohorts (495 youth aged 9–18), and model brain connectivity with intensive time-series methods.
- Examine whether maladaptive social motivation strengthens the link between childhood threat and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and explore whether puberty, biological sex and age modify this interaction.
More about the research
This research asks what else tips the balance. It focuses on social motivation: how much a young person wants to connect with peers, and how hard they try to do so. It also asks how social motivation interacts with early experiences of threat and with puberty to shape suicide risk from the preteen years through adolescence.
Why it matters
Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are rising among preteens and adolescents, especially girls. By identifying social motivation and early puberty as possible risk factors that link childhood abuse or violence to suicide risk, this work could help clinicians, schools and families spot at-risk youth earlier. It could also point to specific, targetable processes for suicide prevention programs aimed at preteen girls and adolescents.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Does social motivation in adolescence differentially predict the impact of childhood threat exposure on developing suicidal thoughts and behaviors
NIH · Sep 2023 – Aug 2028
Peripubertal Social Motivation as a Novel Risk Factor Linking Childhood Threat Exposure and Suicidal Ideation and Behavior in Preteen Girls.
NIH · Sep 2024 – May 2028
Closest labs
Kevin Kuehn
University of California-San Diego, CA·Psychology·Early-career
Refine the personalized suicide prevention intervention PRECISE using a user-centered design approach and a case series with high-risk adults.
Jocelyn Meza
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology
Chart the longitudinal trajectories of suicidal thoughts and behaviors from age 10 to 28 in 674 Mexican-origin youth from the California Families Project.
Madhukar Trivedi
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Investigate how the amount of social media use and positive or negative online experiences affect depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation trajectories over six months in 100 at-risk Texas youth.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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