Introduction:

The complexity of suicidal behavior in children under 12 years of age, as well as the difficulties in epidemiological description and report of this health concern in Cuba, complicates its sociodemographic stratification and, therefore, the knowledge of the professionals who attend it.

Objective:

To characterize suicidal behavior in a population under 12 years of age in Cuba.

Methods:

With a mixed research approach, a systematic review was developed. The articles were extracted from the databases Web of Science, SCOPUS, and SciELO, using a defined search strategy. The recovered documents were processed using the reference manager Endnote X7. Firstly, duplicates were eliminated, and later a content analysis of the titles and abstracts was carried out based on the following criteria: 1) academic articles on suicidal behavior in children under 12 years of age, 2) all studies carried out in Cuba from 1973 to 2018. The results were processed using quantitative analysis to describe the bibliometric characteristics of the articles, followed by a qualitative processing of the content of the articles.

Conclusions:

16 articles have been published, most of which present an epidemiological approach about the risk factors of suicide attempts. Regarding content, the causes were related to a history of personal and family suicidal behavior, as well as experiences of intra-family violence. The state of scientific production shows the need for research that elaborates, from more psychological perspectives, on this behavior in children under 12 years of age.

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