Abstract
BackgroundThere is a need to understand the psychological characteristics of suicide attempters to prevent future suicide attempts. This study aims to examine potential differences between individuals who have attempted suicide and those who have not done so, on several risk and protective measures.MethodParticipants were 11,806 undergraduate students from seven provinces in China, of which 237 reported a non-fatal suicide attempt. We used the random numbers generator function within the SPSS to randomly select a control subset of 1185 participants to be used as the comparison group based on a 1:5 case-control ratio. Scores on three commonly used risk measures (depression, hopelessness, and psychache) and three protective measures (social support, self-esteem, and purpose in life) for suicidality were adopted to compare the responses of the two groups.ResultsSuicide attempters had indicated higher Median scores for all three risk factor measurements. Suicide attempters also reported significantly lower Median scores for all three protective factor measurements compared to non-suicide attempters. The results suggest that the suicide attempters’ group had higher risks of suicidality compared to the non-attempter group.ConclusionsSuicide attempters continued to report higher scores of risk factors and lower scores of protective factors, indicating that they may continue to be at a higher likelihood of a suicide attempt. Key protective factors should be identified for each individual in order to deliver appropriate clinical interventions to reduce their risk of reattempting.
Highlights
There is a need to understand the psychological characteristics of suicide attempters to prevent future suicide attempts
Suicide attempters reported significantly lower Median scores for all three protective factor measurements compared to non-suicide attempters
The results suggest that the suicide attempters’ group had higher risks of suicidality compared to the non-attempter group
Summary
There is a need to understand the psychological characteristics of suicide attempters to prevent future suicide attempts. The World Health Organization estimates that there are approximately 25 cases of attempted suicide for every suicide death [1]. This modest estimate of 25 attempted cases for every. In China, the estimated suicide rate for year 2015 was about 8/100,000 population [2]. Based on an estimated population of 1.4 billion, this equates to at least 112,000 people a year. Approximately 135 other individuals experience substantive negative impact [3]. This works out to approximately 15 million people affected negatively by suicide in China each year
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