Objectives Worldwide, billions of children and young people live in areas affected by war. Suicide remains one of the three leading causes of death worldwide among people aged 15–29 years.
However, little is known about the effect of war on suicidal behaviours in this group. This review aims to assess suicides, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation among children and young people exposed to war or armed conflict.
Design A scoping review of studies was conducted using Web of Science, PubMed, Embase and PsycINFO databases from their inception to 18 November 2025, without any restrictions on geographical location. We included only observational studies with full-text, peer-reviewed English articles reporting any suicides, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation of children and young people aged 0–24 years exposed to war.
The quality of the included articles was assessed using the Quality Assessment with Diverse Studies. The protocol of the review was registered with the Open Science Framework on 29 March 2022 ( https://osf.io/7kszh/ ).
BMJ Open published a clinical update in Research Highlights on 04 Jun 2026.
The item focuses on Suicides, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation among children and young people exposed to war: a scoping review.
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