Study on the attitudes toward suicide among university students in Chongqing

OBJECTIVE: To explore the attitudes on suicide and their related factors among university students in Chongqing. METHODS: A total of 9808 students from 11 universities in Chongqing, were chosen under stratified cluster random sampling method and had completed a questionnaire survey through the Scale of Public Attitudes on Suicide(SPAS). RESULTS: Data showed that the scores of university students having negative or neutral attitudes towards questions including "suicide is not preventable", "suicidal behavior is not controllable or is caused by outside forces" and "suicidal behavior can(or is used to)affect the behavior of others'" were 34.28±16.44, 35.64±19.14 and 36.94±16.05 respectively. The scores of students taking neutral attitude towards questions as:"similarity of attempted and completed suicide", "negative attitudes on the behavior or on the person him/her self", "positive aspects of suicide and positive feelings about suicides"were 47.38±22.01, 51.78±17.05 and 37.77±18.12 respectively but 70.77±17.21 went to the students who had agreed with "suicide is an important social/health problem". Factors as gender, nationality, religion, history of attempted suicide and suicide exposure to others appeared having had important effects on the attitude towards suicide among college students. CONCLUSION: It is necessary to consider above mentioned factors when developing related suicide crisis intervention strategy. Language: zh