Influence of Parental Attitude Toward Psychiatric Help on Their Children’s Suicidal Ideation: A Convenience Sample Study on One South Korean Middle School

Abstract

Depression, depression stigma, and attitude toward psychiatric help are associated factors of suicide in adolescents. As parents are the main decision-makers of receiving professional help for their children’s depression and suicide, parental factors influencing their children’s suicide should be examined. Moreover, parents’ help-seeking attitude for their own mental health problems could affect their children’s mental health problems. Therefore, this study examined the serial mediation of adolescents’ depression, depression stigma, and attitude toward psychiatric help in the relationship between parental attitude toward psychiatric help and the suicidal ideation of their children, using data of 103 parent–child pairs. A cross-sectional study was conducted by employing a self-administered survey. A serial mediation analysis was performed using Amos 25.0. Parental attitude toward psychiatric help directly and indirectly influenced children’s suicidal ideation. Children’s depression stigma, attitude toward psychiatric help, and depression mediated the relationship of parental attitude toward psychiatric help and their children’s suicidal ideation. When parents have a more positive attitude toward psychiatric help, their children’s suicidal ideation become more decreased. Enhancing only parental attitude toward psychiatric help may make a positive change on their children’s suicidal ideation. The study findings imply that when developing and applying youth suicide prevention programs, how parents affect their children’s suicidal ideation should be considered as well as adolescents’ depression stigma, attitude toward psychiatric help, and depression. Given the results of this study, healthcare providers may better evaluate the effectiveness of their intervention programs for preventing adolescents’ suicide.

Policy Development for Crisis Management in the Context of Sri Lanka

“…The study predominantly adopted a convenience sampling technique which is inherently biased and should not be identified as a true representation of the actual case of Sri Lanka (Etikan, Musa, and Alkassim 2016). Given the study utilised the university networks in collecting data, the study might be influenced by a degree of sampling bias (Jeong and Park 2020). Although this means that some of the key findings of the study are not generalisable, the development of governance capacity and legitimacy as driving towards resilience building is identified as an avenue for future empirical work.…”

Stigma towards Child and Adolescent Mental Health Problems among Fathers and Mothers. A Cross-sectional Study

“…However, they do not include the most frequent myths about suicide (Eshun, 2006;Lee et al, 2007;Ouzouni & Nakakis, 2009;Renberg & Jacobsson, 2003). It is possible to cite a single study, as far as we are aware of, where stigma towards their children's suicidal behavior was assessed in 103 parents, detecting how attitude towards psychiatric help and stigma in depression directly and indirectly influenced children's depression (Jeong & Park, 2020).…”