Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts Among University Students: Prevalence and What Stopped them to Actually Committing Suicide

Abstract

Even though university students realize that their journey is challenging and sometimes suffering, they kind of have to endure whatever it is, in order to get a better life or position in the society. Like it or not, university students may expose themselves to tiring and stressful situations which eventually may affect their emotional or psychological states which may lead them to the idea of taking their own life or commit suicide. The purposes of the present study were to examine the prevalence of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among university students aged between 22 and 32 years. Using a simple random sampling technique, a total of 3879 (52.4% female) university students from two Malaysian public universities was surveyed by means of a self-reported questionnaire. In this study, 22.1% students reported to have suicidal ideation and 1.6% students reported to have almost committed suicide, but stopped doing it, of whom 43 also participated in an interview. Those who agreed to participate in the interview were also the one who fell in the Suicidal Ideating Student (SIS) category, and they also admitted to have almost committed suicide before. All the data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Based on the finding of the present study, major, gender, race, and accommodation had no impact on suicidal ideation among university students for the past twelve months. Based on the semi-structured interview with those students who nearly committed suicide, but stopped their attempts, there were five common reasons revealed in the present study.