ADOLESCENTES DE LA CIUDAD DE MÉXICO:1997 Y 2000

SUMMARY According to census data, Mexico is a country of children and youths. In 1995, 39% of the population was under 14 years old and 29.6% was between 15 and 29 years old. So, this population, ranging from 0 to 29 years, represented two thirds of the total population of the country (68.2%). The capital of the country, Mexico City, concentrated 9.3% of the total population, and the proportion of children and young students is obviously considerable, so that researching their needs in the mental health field turns into a priority. In several countries of the world, it has been recognized that suicide among adolescents is a public mental health problem, and Mexico is not an exception in this sense. The main question here is knowing how frequent the problem is among adolescent students. Unfortunately, official health records do not specifically distinguish this feature, because they only report statistics according to gender and age, but not according to population type (such as students). Because of that, it is highly important to create systematic and periodic registers that allow for the detection and monitoring of tendencies from an epidemiologic perspective. Detecting risk groups and identifying risk and protective factors is highly important in order to deal with the adolescent suicide problem. Taking into account two measurements, carried out in 1997 and 2000, the aims of the present study are: