This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Arabia, and to some extent in Turkey, reduced ORs were observed for Austria, China, Italy, Japan and the USA. Elevated ORs for psychological distress were seen in Japan, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey but reduced ORs were noted in Austria, China, Iran, Italy and the USA. Psychological distress was strongly associated with reports of suicide ideation and attempts. Suicide ideation, suicide attempt and psychological distress are common in university students but their rates vary depending on the sociocultural context. Permanent repository linkDue attention should be devoted to the mental health needs of young adults enrolled in higher educational institutions and more cross-cultural research is warranted to better understand the etiology of the observed intersocietal variations in suicidal behavior and psychological distress.

This paper reports the results of a comparative investigation of attitudes to suicide and suicidal persons in 5,572 university students from 12 countries. Participants filled out two scales measuring attitudes towards suicide and suicidal persons, a measure of psychological distress together with the questions about suicidal behavior. Results showed that the highest suicide acceptance scores were observed in Austrian, UK, Japanese and Saudi Arabian samples and the lowest scores were noted in Tunisian, Turkish, Iranian and Palestinian samples. While the highest social acceptance scores for a suicidal friend were noted in Turkish, US, Italian and Tunisian samples, the lowest scores were seen in Japanese, Saudi Arabian, Palestinian and Jordanian samples. Compared to participants with a suicidal past, those who were never suicidal displayed more internal barriers against suicidal behavior. Men were more accepting of suicide than women but women were more willing to help an imagined suicidal peer. Participants with accepting attitudes towards suicide but rejecting attitudes towards suicidal persons reported more suicidal behavior and psychological distress, and were more often from high suicide rate countries and samples than their counterparts. They are considered to be caught in a fatal trap in which most predominant feelings of suicidality such as hopelessness or helplessness are likely to occur. We conclude that in some societies such as Japan and Saudi Arabia it might be difficult for suicidal individuals to activate and make use of social support systems.

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Health literacy is a public health priority which refers to individual's knowledge, motivation and competence to access, understand, appraise and apply health information to prevent disease and promote health in daily life. This study aimed to adapt European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47) into Turkish and to investigate its psychometric properties. The questionnaire was translated into Turkish by using both group translation and expert opinion methods. Forward translation-back translation method was used for language validity and the final Turkish version (HLS-TR) was formed. HLS-EU-Q47 and Health Awareness Scale (HAS) were administered to 505 respondents. The scale reliability was examined using Crohnbach's alpha coefficient and the construct validity was assessed by principal axis factoring procedure. The convergent validity was obtained by Pearson correlation coefficients between HLS-TR and HAS scores and discriminant validity was examined comparing the scores of participants who were stratified according to ages, educational status, gender, general health status and social status. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole scale was 0.95. Principal axis factoring extracted nine factors which eigenvalues were >1 and explained 50.01% of total variance. Factor matrix displayed that all items gave greater load in factor 1, showing that health literacy measured with one factor. Positive and significant correlation was found between HLS-TR and HAS. Significant relations were found between HLS-TR scores and selected determinants of health. This study revealed that the HLS-TR was a valid and reliable measuring instrument with appropriate psychometric characteristics.

Objective The study investigated the associations of religiosity, religious coping and suicide acceptance to suicide ideation and attempts in 7427 young adults affiliating with Islam from 11 Muslim countries. Method A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. We used F and χ2 tests and correlation analyses to report descriptive statistics. Multi-group path models with (i) a zero-inflated Poisson distribution and, (ii) a Binomial distribution were used to model the number of occurrences of suicidal ideation, and occurrence of a suicide attempt, respectively. Results Religiosity was negatively associated with acceptability of suicide, but it was positively related to punishment after death across the 11 countries. Religiosity was negatively associated with ever experiencing suicidal ideation, both directly and indirectly through its association with attitudes towards suicide, especially the belief in acceptability of suicide. Neither positive nor negative religious coping were related to suicidal ideation. However, religiosity was negatively related to suicide attempts among those who experienced suicidal ideation at least once. This association was mediated through the belief in acceptability of suicide and religious coping. Negative religious coping was positively associated with suicide attempts probably because it weakened the protective effects of religiosity. Conclusions Findings from this study suggest that the effects of religiosity in the suicidal process operate through attitudes towards suicide. We therefore conclude that clinical assessment as well as research in suicidology may benefit from paying due attention to attitudes towards suicide.