Suicide risk in young adults: warning signs in everyday life
According to the World Health Organization, suicide is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 29. This is a critical transitional stage of life, marked by substantial psychobiological, relational, and social pressures. These figures highlight a major public health challenge and underscore the importance of developing sensitive and effective prevention tools. Preventing suicide risk requires not only recognizing relatively stable vulnerability factors, such as a personal or family history of psychopathology, but also promptly identifying changes that may occur over shorter periods. University settings provide a particularly valuable context for this purpose, as subclinical forms of psychological distress may constitute a silent emergency among young people without a diagnosed mental disorder.
Monitoring suicide risk in everyday life means focusing on proximal factors - that is, within-person fluctuations in behavioral, physiological, and contextual indicators that may signal periods of heightened vulnerability. In this population, tracking changes in sleep–wake patterns, activity levels, and physiological arousal, particularly when they occur alongside negative daily events, can help identify not only who is most vulnerable, but also when risk is more likely to increase.
A study conducted by the Department of General Psychology, in collaboration with the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization at the University of Padua, and published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, investigated these indicators in 104 university students. Over the course of one week, participants used a smartphone application at several points throughout the day to report their emotional state, a composite measure of suicide risk, including psychological suffering, distress, psychomotor agitation, and the desire to live or die, and the positive and negative events they had experienced. At the same time, their nightly sleep duration, physical activity, and heart rate were monitored using wearable devices. The results demonstrated the importance of monitoring daily changes in sleep, physical activity, and heart rate relative to each individual’s usual patterns. Sleeping less than usual, engaging in higher-than-usual levels of activity, and having a heart rate above one’s personal average were associated with an increased level of suicide risk on the following day. This association was stronger on days characterized by a greater number of negative events.
Continuous monitoring of these parameters, which can be readily collected through wearable devices and smartphones, could transform suicide-prevention protocols, particularly within university psychological support services. By tracking behavioral patterns, these technologies could help identify periods of greatest vulnerability and support the development of personalized preventive interventions.
Dell’Acqua, C., Mastromatteo, L. Y., Degasperi, G., Cellini, N., Soliman, L., Oppioli, L., Palomba, D., Scrimin, S., & Messerotti Benvenuti, S. (2026). Proximal contributors to suicide risk in college students: A multidimensional ecological momentary assessment. Journal of Affective Disorders, 412, 122148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2026.122148
