How teacher–student relationships are associated with adolescent suicide risk: a three-wave longitudinal study of perceived burdensomeness and psychological capital

Adolescent suicide represents a critical global public health concern, underscoring the urgent need to identify its underlying psychological mechanisms and protective factors. The present study employed a three-wave longitudinal design over one year with a sample of 1428 secondary school students to examine whether teacher–student relationships are associated with subsequent suicide risk through parallel mediating pathways involving interpersonal needs and psychological capital. Results from path analyses indicated that perceived burdensomeness, resilience, and optimism significantly mediated the association between teacher–student relationships and adolescent suicide risk.

Among the significant mediators, optimism showed the largest estimated indirect effect among the significant mediators. The findings suggest that supportive teacher–student relationships are prospectively associated with lower adolescent suicide risk primarily via lower perceived burdensomeness and higher resilience and optimism, highlighting the critical role of positive psychological resources in adolescent suicide prevention. The authors thank all participants for their involvement in this study.

This research was supported by the Youth Project of the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning (No. 24NDQN22Z). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Intelligent Laboratory of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Zhejiang Province, School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China Shuming Tong, Yu Liu, Zixuan Xu, Lingfeng Gao & Weijian Li The authors declare no competing interests.

All procedures performed in this study were approved by the Ethics in Human Research Committee of Zhejiang Normal University (ZSRT2024266) and were conducted in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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