• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2020

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the interest level, perception and attitude of suicide high-risk group toward the media's suicide report, and also to provide the fundamental data in order to strengthen both the standard and the recommendation of media coverage in Korea. Methods We analyzed the data from the 2013 The Korea National Suicide Survey. The study included 1500 participants aged between 19 and 75 years. The participants were selected through the regional multi-layer stratification method using the sampling frame of the 2010 Census. One-on-one face-to-face interviews investigated the interest level, opinions, and attitudes toward suicide reports and collected data on past suicide history and demographic data. The collected data were evaluated using multiple logistic regression analysis. A probability level of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results The suicide high risk groups with histories of suicidal ideations or attempts showed more interest in suicidal reports [suicidal thought odds ratio (OR) = 1.81, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.40-2.34 ; suicidal attempt OR = 3.21, 95% Cl = 1.52-6.78]. However, there was no difference among the groups in thought that suicide reports incite suicide (suicidal thought OR = 1.26, 95% Cl = 0.92-1.73 ; suicidal attempt OR = 0.96, 95% Cl = 0.44-2.09). The suicide high risk groups showed a positive attitude toward suicide reports, but it was not statistically significant (suicidal thought OR = 1.10, 95% Cl = 0.41-2.92 ; suicidal attempt OR = 1.10, 95% Cl = 0.76-1.59). Conclusions We suggest the need of careful attitude of media suicidal reports not to bring about copycat suicides. and also we offer suicide prevention campaign based on media leverage.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.21
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• pp.9549-9553
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• 2014

Background: Cancer affects patients in many ways including physical, social, emotional, psychological and economic and restricts the functional lives. Psychiatric problems seen among cancer patients may increase the suicide probability and patients perceive suicide as a peaceful death type. The aim of this study was to examine the correlation between functional life and suicide probability among cancer patients. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted with 105 cancer patients as descriptive. The Functional Living Index_Cancer (FLIC)," suicide probability scale" (SPS) and personal information form were used as data collecting tools. Data were evaluated by descriptive analysis, and Pearson's correlation. Results: It was determined that 34.3% of patients thought of suicide. Significant negative correlation was found between functional life and suicide probability (r=-.641, p=0.000), increase being evident in those with poor functional life. Conclusions: It is recommended that cancer patients should be supported for improving their functional lives with help in coping processes for illness and treatment symptoms. Evaluation of the patient mental status to prevent the suicide among this group is an important role for nurses.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.183-189
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• 2009

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to evaluate community mental health professionals and hospital workers attitude and awareness towards suicide. Methods : This study investigated 264 community mental health professionals and 228 hospital workers. SOQs (Suicidal Opinion Questionnaires) were used from July 2007 to September 2007. After a factor analysis for the attitude towards suicide, the items on ethics, mental illness, religion, risk, and motivation were included in the subsequent analysis. Results : There were significant differences in the attitude towards suicide according to religion, age, educational background, the marriage status, the economic position, and different professional licenses. Hospital workers' view was different from the community workers'. The hospital workers judged that suicide was due to mental illness, and suicide was high for the people in a special environment and who lacked motivation, which caused them to fall in a dangerous situation. For the lower educational group, they thought that suicide was attributable to mental illness. The awareness for suicide was significantly higher in the group with a postgraduate education, unmarried people, mental health professionals and the persons who had concern and experience with suicide. The factors that had an influence on the awareness of suicide were the items of mental illness, religion, risk and motivational factors. Conclusions : This study suggested that the factors to increase the awareness and attitude for suicide were the experience of increased education and case management of suicide. Therefore, education dealing with suicide and reinforcement of crisis management programs should be developed.

• Journal of the Korean society of biological therapies in psychiatry
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.129-141
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• 2018

Suicide is a behavior that is intended to cause death by itself and requires medical treatment, resulting in suicidal attempt or completion. Suicide causes loss of life, damages the body, costs a lot of medical expenses, and causes families to fall into sorrow and suffering therefore this suicide is a huge loss to family and society. There have been attempts to reduce and prevent suicide by understanding the mechanism of suicide. The mechanism of suicide can be thought of as psychological mechanism and biological mechanism. In the past, if we considered the psychological and biological mechanisms separately, the development of neuroscience now connects and integrates these two. Psychological factors affect biological factors and biological temperaments also affect perception or thinking about the situation and increase psychological vulnerability. Distant factors in suicidal behavior-such as childhood adversity and family and genetic predisposition-increase the lifetime risk of suicide. They alter the response to stress and other processes through changes in gene expression and regulation of emotional and behavioral characteristics. Distant factors affect the biological system and consequently changes in these systems can increase the risk of suicide. In other words, the distal factor does not directly induce suicidal behavior but rather acts indirectly through developmental or mediating factors. These mediating factors are impulsive aggressive and anxious trait, and chronic use of substances. The mechanism of this disorder is the abnormality of the serotonin system and the abnormality of the lipid level. Proximal factors are associated with the onset of suicide events and include changes in the major neurotransmitter systems, inflammatory changes, and dysfunction of glial cells in the brain. A series of studies, including a variety of research methods and postmortem and in-vivo imaging studies, show the impairment of the serotonergic neurotransmitter system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress response system for suicidal behavior. These disorders lead to suicidal behavior due to difficulty in cognitive control of mood, pessimism, reactive aggression, abnormality in problem solving abilities, excessive response to negative social signals, severe emotional distress, and cognitive dysregulation of suicidal ideation.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.71-78
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• 2019

Objectives Suicide is a complex phenomenon not only caused by the individual's mental illness and economic situation, but also occurred in sociocultural contexts and relationships around the individual. Therefore, the attitudes, which include collective norms, thoughts and feelings of a population, toward suicide play a fundamental role in the prevention of suicide. Factor structure of Attitudes Toward Suicide (ATTS), developed by Renberg, is also various in different sociocultural contexts. This is the first study to investigate factor structure of ATTS along with nationwide sample of Korean adults. Methods This study analyzed the factor structure and reliability of ATTS in 1500 regionally stratified Korean adults. Exploratory factor analysis was performed by using principal axis factoring and varimax rotation. Results The selection of 33 ATTS items based on internal consistency and communality was conducted. Five factors were analyzed, which were named 'Good reason,' 'Negative gaze,' 'Predictability,' 'Means of escape,' and 'Common secret,' respectively. Explained total variance was 41.94%, and the internal consistency ranged from 0.516 to 0.740. Conclusions Each of the five factors contains different semantic dimensions. Consistent with previous studies, factors containing permissive attitude toward suicide was high in those with history of suicidal thought and of suicide attempt. It is notable that the 'Good reason' showed higher score in elderly. This may be related to socioeconomic or physical adversities which have been considered the major cause of suicide in elderly.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.524-532
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• 2010

Purpose: This study was done to explore the relationship of social support and meaning of life to suicidal thoughts among patients with cancer. Methods: Data were collected by questionnaires from 138 patients who had been in cancer treatment at medical clinics and 8 patients who were members of an internet cancer association. The data were collected between August and November 2009 and analyzed using SPSS 12.0. Results: Of the participants, 47.3% reported having had suicidal thoughts and 16.4% had attempted suicide since the diagnosis of cancer. The study participants received most support from family members, but 73.3% reported experiencing an existential vacuum. The suicide attempt group had significantly higher scores according to gender, age, level of education, diagnosis, treatment modality, level of activity, caregiver and social support compare to the suicide thought group. Suicidal thoughts were negatively related to social support and meaning of life was positively associated with social support. Support from family and friends and diagnosis explained 50.0% of variance for suicidal thoughts with 36.0% of variance being explained by family support. Conclusion: Nurses should be able to identify risk factors for suicide in cancer patients. Prevention and intervention efforts need to be directed toward improving social support, family support in particular, and assisting patients finding meaning in life after a diagnosis of cancer.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.711-720
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• 2021

Objectives: This study attempted to determine the influence of factors related to suicide attempts in the elderly. Data from a 2017 Community Health Survey were used to find 67,810 subjects aged 65 years or older. Methods: Cross-analysis and logistic regression analysis were conducted by dividing the suicide thought and suicide attempt experience groups. Results: In the group with subjective stress, suicidal thoughts were higher in women 2.748 times (p<0.01) and 1.917 times (p<0.001) in women. In terms of income level, the higher the income level, the lower the suicidal ideation experience. Suicide attempts were 0.708 times lower when mastication was not uncomfortable and 0.170 times lower when the patient was not experiencing depression (p<0.001). Conclusions: The correlation between oral dysfunction and suicidal thoughts and attempts in the elderly has been demonstrated, and it is expected to be used as baseline data for establishing an institutional study.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.801-806
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• 2014

The purpose of this research is to analyze related with suicide impulse according to family intimacy of the aged people in a metropolis and a fishing village. Subject of the research were 100 aged people residing at N Goo, Seoul from March 10 to July 29 in 2013 and 100 aged people residing at S-myon, Wando-gun, JeollaNam-do from May 17 to September 20 in 2013 respectively through questionnaire survey. Analysis on data was executed for t-test, correlation analysis, multiple regression method, etc. using SPSS/WIN 18.0 program. Empirical analysis was verified at 5% of significance level. From the result of the analysis, firstly, suicide impulse of aged people in a metropolis was high when family adaptation capability of them was low. Secondly, suicide impulse of aged people in a metropolis showed significant correlation with family adaption capability. Thirdly, suicide impulse of aged people in a metropolis was higher than that of aged people in a fishing village. It is thought that this thesis can suggest a good reference document in establishing a suicide prevention policy for enhancing intimacy of family function.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.262-274
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• 2013

This study was performed in order to verify the effect of family resilience in youth suicide. The subject was the third year of high school boys in Gwang-ju, 308 questionnaires were used in the analysis. In order to derive the results of a study, we used the statistical processing technique SPSS, to perform verification of factor analysis and reliability of each variable, AMOS analysis was performed for hypothesis testing. According to the result of the study, belief systems which was sub-variables of family resiliency affect communication, and communication influence on the idea of adolescents suicide. In addition, the belief system has an indirect impact on the communication mediated suicidal thought. Thus, If we emphasize the harmony between family, suicidal thought of adolescent will be reduced. So we proposed the way to increase the belief of the family, and ways to improve communication between parents and children.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.118-124
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• 2018

Objectives Although impulsivity has long been thought as an important factor influencing suicidal behaviors, it is unknown whether impulsivity increases the risk of dying from suicidal behaviors and what specific component among constructs of impulsivity contributes to the risk of dying among suicide attempters. Methods To elucidate the association between impulsivity and medical lethality of suicide attempt among suicide attempters, we consecutively recruited 46 suicide attempters who visited an emergency room of a general hospital located in a metropolitan area, Seoul, Republic of Korea, due to suicide attempts and consented to participate in this study. Then we assessed medical lethality with the Beck Lethality Scale (LS) and impulsivity with the Korean version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11-Revised (BIS). Demographic variables were obtained from medical records and structured social work reports for suicide attempters. Results Although total scores of the BIS did not correlate with LS scores, only the scores of self-control, that is one of the Barrett's six theoretical constructs of impulsivity in which the higher score indicates less self-control and more impulsivity, had a significant positive correlation with scores of LS (p = 0.003). The association remained significant after adjusting for variables known to affect suicide lethality such as job status, recent alcohol consumption, diagnosis of depressive disorders, and having a plan for suicide (${\beta}=0.429$, p = 0.009). Conclusions Not impulsivity in general, but poor self-control, in particular, predicts lethal suicidal behaviors among suicide attempters. The degree of self-control should be evaluated when assessing patients with elevated suicide risk, and proper measures should be installed to prevent possible future lethal suicide attempts.