Young Adults' Suicide Related Knowledge and Attitudes: Implications for suicide awareness education

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of gender, personal experience with suicidal others and exposure to suicide awareness education upon suicide related knowledge and attitudes of 190 young adults and 52 older adults. Results showed that both the young and older adults indicated a substantial degree of personal experience with suicidal others, and despite displaying inadequate knowledge, possessed reasonable attitudes to adolescent suicide (e.g., need for education). Young adults' level of knowledge was found to vary as a function of gender (females displaying better knowledge than males), and having been exposed to school-based suicide curriculum. Differential gender effects also emerged in young adults' suicide-related attitudes with females indicating greater support for the inclusion of suicide education in schools. The implications of these findings for school-based suicide prevention efforts are discussed.

Attitude towards suicide among medical students in a medical college of rural south India

“…Both students were similar in terms of punishment & communicating problems. More females (20.6% vs 34.4%) disagreed of suicide as a sign of mental illness & also in hiding suicidal information (34.8% vs 41.4%) while they (28.2% vs 48.7%) agreed more on open reporting & discussion of suicide.Females have a more positive and accepting attitude towards suicide than males asfound in studies by Arya Thornhill et al, Arnautovska et al [9,10,15]. Abbott et al & Bhuiyan et al revealed no association between gender and attitude, but highest score on permissiveness was found in Bhuiyan's study.…”

“…[8] In our study, students do not have a permissive attitude towards suicide (88% of them have a restrictive attitude).Though 47%believe that it is punishable & a sin, another 48% believe that it is a sign of mental illness. A huge majority (93.4%) are of the strong opinion of communicating psychological problems& hence of seeking help as shown in Table 3 [9,10] Tarun Mene et al in an Indian study from Arunachal Pradesh, Peltzer, Cherian et al 2000,Eshun et al 2003demonstrated that acceptable or positive ATTS were often found prior to suicidal ideation/behaviour. [11,12,13] According to Eskin [14][15][16][17][18] Upon further categorization of attitude towards suicide data into male & female sets, as depicted in Table 3 [19,20] When it comes to attitude towards a suicidal person, our medical students have a very high acceptance score and also are ready to help them as evident in Table 2.…”