Neurobehavioral pathways linking socioeconomic status hardship to suicide risk versus resilience in young adolescents: the roles of sleep health and default mode network connectivity.
Translational psychiatry November 24, 2025 Assaf Oshri, Cullin J Howard, Steven M Kogan et al.
Socioeconomic hardship increases the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in adolescents, partly through shorter sleep duration. A study of 11,878 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study found that higher levels of hardship predicted more suicidal ideation and attempts. Shorter sleep acted as a pathway linking hardship to suicidal thoughts, but this indirect effect was weaker in adolescents with higher coherence in the brain's Default Mode Network. The findings suggest that sleep health is a mechanism connecting economic adversity to suicide risk, and that DMN coherence may serve as a neuroprotective factor supporting resilience.