This study analyzed the factors related to the suicidal ideas of high school students from the eco-system perspective including individual/psychological system, family system, school system and socio-environmental system. After reviewing the previous ...
This study analyzed the factors related to the suicidal ideas of high school students from the eco-system perspective including individual/psychological system, family system, school system and socio-environmental system. After reviewing the previous literature related to the eco-system theories and suicidal ideas, this study examined self-esteem and depression among the individual/psychological factors. As the family system factors, this study included family harmony, communication between parents and children, economic status and level of parental abuse. As the school system factors, this study included stress from study, attachment and adjustment to school. For the socio-environmental system, this study analyzed the factors of each system that affects the suicidal ideas in the eco-system of high school students including mass media and social support and identified the significant factors that affect their suicidal ideas.
The study sample consisted of 350 high school students attending 9 high schools located in Gongju, Chungnam. The collected data was submitted to SPSS for Window 14.0 for analysis. To examine the general characteristics of the sample, frequency analysis and t-test were conducted. To examine the relationships among the variables affecting the suicidal ideas of high school students across the general characteristics, simple correlational analyses were conducted. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to analyze the relative impacts of the factor related to the suicidal ideas of high school students.
The summarized study results are as follows.
First, the result showed that self-esteem and depression significantly affects the suicidal ideas of high school students. In other words, the most significant factor that affects the suicidal idea is self-esteem, and the next factor is depression. This results implies that while self-esteem should be enhanced, depression should be lowered to reduce the suicidal ideas. Higher level of suicidal ideas was found in those students who lack in the clear awareness of the reasons for their existence in this world and think they were born accidentally or mistakenly. Self-esteem is associated with the dimensions of importance, identity and potential, which leads to the self-abusive thought that one is not important. It can be also extended to the negative thoughts, helplessness in which one think that he/she can't do anything and uncertainty about one's hopeful future and potential.
Second, the most significant factor that affects the suicidal ideas of high school students is the parental abuse. The next significant factors include communication with patents, economic status and family harmony in order. This result suggests that while the parental abuse should be reduced, communication with parent should be increased to reduce the suicidal ideas. The result also showed that the depressive students with abused experience are at higher risk of suicide than the students without abused experience. In other words, the parental abuse affects the students more than communication with parents and family harmony, the reason for which is the former factor is associated with the issue of importance. Since the importance that should be formed through the awareness that 'one is an important existence' from one's childhood is extinguished under the name of parental abuse, it forms the vicious cycle with serious suicidal ideas through the adolescence. Since the children exposed to parental violence are more likely to experience abuse, it is reported that the marital violence is not only limited to the parents themselves but seriously affects their children. In addition, this result implies that the physical/sexual abusive experiences of adolescents lead to the unability to perceive familial supports, which in turn leads to damaged self-concept to increase the risk of suicide.
Third, the result of the impact of school system factors on suicidal ideas showed that the most significant factor is the stress from study and the next significant factor is school life. In more specific, this result suggests that while the stress from study should be reduced, the school life should be enhanced. In other words, this result indicates that the psychological pressure from the study is high enough to induce suicidal ideas or impulses in high school students.
Fourth, the result of the impact of socio-environmental system factors on suicidal ideas showed that the social support is significant. In other words, the social support should be increased to reduce the suicidal ideas. It is asserted that those who commit suicide are not introverted and lonely individuals but have strong need for intimacy while experiencing frustration that such need will not be fulfilled. Therefore, the lack of social support is associated with suicidal behaviors. In particular, it is the best predictor for the suicidal behaviors of adolescents.
Therefore, the study results suggest that in order to prevent suicide of high school students, the primary approach to reduce their suicidal ideas is needed while the suicidal ideas should be understood from eco-system perspective that takes into account the impacts of environmental system as well as the impact of individual system. The study results indicates that the suicidal idea of adolescents is not the problem of the individual but a important problem that calls for the social interest and intervention. To prevent the suicidal ideas of adolescents, the social-welfare practice field as well as nation, educational institutions and local communities are facing an important tasks such as nurturing experts by investing a large amount of budget and elites and specific and long-term plan. There is the need for desirable psychological attitude of adolescents, favorable familial and parental relationships, desirable child-rearing attitude and above all change in social values. Furthermore, the preventive method through education may be introduced into the school curriculum; for example, the method to detect peer's suicidal ideas and early intervention. In addition, the suicide-prevention program for high school students, effective self-esteem program and vision school for adolescents based on the study results may be pursued. This study suggests to develope a program that can prevent the suicidal ideas more effectively, comprehensibly and in a balanced way by increasing self-esteem at home and enhancing attachment to school at school to induce vision for all students through the tripled program that links family, school and student's vision.