Association between self-esteem, anxiety and rural attempted suicide in Shandong, China
Suicide is one of important public health problems in the world. Attempted suicide is important predicitor of suicide. Attempted suicide is involved social-demographic, biological, psychological and mental factors. In China, it’s unclear that whether there is association relationship between self-esteem, anxiety and attempted suicide.
METHODS: Paired case-control study method was used. Six counties, in disease surveillance points of Shandong Province, were selected, and rural residents aged 15-70 years old who commit attempted suicide and received treatment in the emergency rooms of the comprehensive hospitals during the period from October 1st, 2009 to March 31st, 2011, were consecutively sampled. Meanwhile, the controls with same gender, age (no more than 3 years), and without suicide history, were random sampled in the neighbor village of the attempted suicides. The instruments include Suicide Intent Scale (SIS), Self-Esteem Scale (SES), Trait Anxiety Inventory (TAI), Interview for Recent Life Events (IRLE), Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders(2001, Research Version). Conditional logistic regression model was used.
RESULTS:
Data of 409 paired attempted suicides and controls were obtained. Multivariate analyses showed that higher self-esteem score was negatively associated while higher anxiety score was positively associated with attempted suicide, with their Odds Ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) being 0.697 (95%CI: 0.418-0.970), 2.454 (95%CI: 1.527-3.944).
CONCLUSIONS: Our study supports that self-esteem and anxiety are independent factors for attempted suicide. Suicide prevention practice should be paid attention to population with low self-esteem and higher anxiety scores.