Micro- and Macrosystem Predictors of High School Male Suicidal Behaviors Cathy Beck-Cross and Robyn Cooper Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 19 years, with male adolescents four times more likely to die than their female peers. This study used Bron- fenbrenner’s bioecological model to examine micro- and macrosystems as predictors of suicidal behaviors through responses by male adolescents (N = 9,910) to a statewide youth survey. Findings show that the micro- and macrosystems of race and ethnicity, individual risky and resilient behaviors, family, school, and community were signiicant predictors of suicide intent, suicide attempt, or both. Recommendations for school social workers are provided for individual, family, school, and community interventions. KEY WORDS: Bronfenbrenner; community; family; resilience; youth suicide T he suicide of a young person leaves a wake of devastation, resulting in an “incalculable impact of loss of life and the emotional trauma experienced by surviving family, friends, and communities” (Crosby, Ortega, & Melanson, 2011, p. 12). Each youth who dies imprints risk on those left behind, as having been exposed to suicide increases survivors’ likelihood of similar behavior, especially when the death was of a friend or a fam- ily member (Bearman & Moody, 2004). Among those ages 15 to 19 years, suicide is the third leading cause of death in the United States; it is the second cause of death among, American Indian/Alaska Na- tives, Asian/Paciic Islanders, non-Hispanic white people, and female Hispanics (Heron, 2013). Male adolescents are especially at risk, as they are four times more likely than their female peers (11.7 and 3.1, respectively) to die by suicide (Heron, 2013), and difer in the constellation of risk and protective factors afecting suicidal behaviors (Gould et al., 2004). A great deal of research has examined individual risk and protective factors related to adolescent sui- cidal behaviors, much of which focuses on mental health symptoms and diagnoses. The role of mental health in suicidality cannot be ignored. The vast ma- jority of youths who die by suicide have evidence of a mental health diagnosis in life or through postmor- tem psychological autopsies (Mos´cicki, 2001), and 90 percent of those who die by suicide could have been identiied as having a mental illness (Shafer et al., 1996). Other individual risky and protective behaviors afect the likelihood of suicidality and have been examined less extensively. Little research has been conducted on the environments in which a young person interacts, such as school and family, and even less focuses on the collective impact of individual factors in conjunction with family, school, and community and how these inluences relate to male adolescents. School social workers are more likely than other school-based employees to provide crisis interven- tion (Singer & Slovak, 2011), including suicide re- sponse. Because social workers approach prevention from a systems-oriented perspective, they are poised to move from suicide response to prevention by in- tegrating the multiple inluences on youth behavior. Similar to the focus on the role of the individual in identifying predictors of suicide, prevention strate- gies focus primarily on the individual, particularly the role of mental health. An alternate strategy to suicide prevention involves a systemic approach to address each of the systems in a young person’s life. Attitudes and behaviors related to suicidal behav- ior have been examined through national school- based surveys such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) (2012) Youth Risk Behav- ior Survey and similar tools administered at the local level in the United States. These state and national self-report student surveys assess risk and resilience and provide valuable information about predictors of suicidal behavior. Few studies have examined the predictors of youth suicide through a systemic ap- proach such as Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) bioecological 1 doi: 10.1093/cs/cdv028 © 2015 National Association of Social Workers Children & Schools Advance Access published August 6, 2015