Anime watching in childhood may affect suicidal risk factors in adult life

IntroductionSuicide is one of the leading causes of death worldwide being the fourth major cause of death among young people 15-29 years old. The reduction of suicide mortality is prioritized by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019). There is a number of internal and external factors associated with suicidality (Soto-Sanz V et al., 2019; Farbstein et al., 2022.). Special attention is paid to the influence of the social media on suicidality (Cheng A. T. A. et al., 2007; Niederkrotenthaler T. et al., 2020; Sedgwick R. et al., 2019). In the Russian Federation, anime, an animation genre and a media cultural phenomenon, is increasingly popular among young people. Characters who are lonely and lost their meaning of life are common in anime. Romanticization and idealization of such characters may lead to increased attractiveness of death and thus have a negative effect on the mental health of adolescents and young adults due to their incomplete identity development (Liu Y. et al., 2022; Backer, H. A., 2023).ObjectivesWe aimed to study the influence of the anime on the presence of suicidality and depression in adolescents and young adults in the Russian Federation.MethodsWe interviewed 304 people living in the Russian Federation and watching anime on the regular basis (244 women, mean age 20.9 ± 3.8 years, range 13-36 years). We collected sociodemographic data and age when a person had started watching anime. We performed Reasons for Living Inventory, RFL (M. Linehan et al., 1983), Beck Depression Inventory, BDI (Aaron Beck, 1961). We divided all participants into three groups according to their age: adolescents (13-19 years), young people (20-24 years), adults (25-36 years). In each group, we compared BDI: level of depressive symptoms, cognitive-affective subscale, subscale of somatic manifestations of depression; RFL scales: Survival coping beliefs, responsibility to family, child related concerns, fear of suicide, fear of social disapproval, moral objections between three subgroups based on the age of the anime watching start (