Research reportSuicidal ideation and attempts among rural Chinese aged 16–34 years — Socio-demographic correlates in the context of a transforming China
Section snippets
Sampling
The study was approved by the Survey and Behavioral Ethics Committee of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Study involved collaboration with the Mianyang Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its regional CDCs. The project was conducted in the vicinity of Mianyang Region, Sichuan Province (Southwestern China). We chose to study rural regions in the vicinity of Mianyang, Sichuan Province, in the southwestern part of China. This area is typical of many rural regions in China,
Participation
Fig. 1 depicts the study's sampling results.
Distribution of socio-demographic features
Table 1 shows the distribution of socio-demographic features of the sample.
Prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts
Table 2 shows the prevalence of lifetime and one-year outcomes with rates for female and male included. The figures indicated that female rate is generally higher than male rate across all suicidal measures.
Associations of lifetime suicidal ideation, serious ideation, plan and attempts with socio-demographic characteristics
Univariate findings are presented in Table 3. The univariate analysis revealed that female gender (OR = 1.48), lowest education level (OR = 1.86), ‘other’ marital status (OR =
Comparison of prevalence with other studies
Based on data collected from nine countries/regions with items similar to ours Weissman et al. reported lifetime prevalence of suicide ideation, ranging from 2.09% to 18.51%, and lifetime prevalence of suicide attempt, ranging from 0.72% to 5.93% (Weissman et al., 1999). In comparison to the above data, the lifetime prevalence of suicide ideation of our sample (18.8%) was at the higher end; while our prevalence of suicide attempt (2.8%) was at the low end of the data reported by Weissman et al.
Role of fund source
This work was supported in part by an unrestricted educational grant from Lundbeck Export A/S (H. Chiu, PI); by Direct Grant 2041160 from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (S. Chan, PI); and by grant D43 TW05814 from the Fogarty International Center of NIH (E.D. Caine, PI). All the funding sources listed had no role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Conflict of interest
All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
We thank Mianyang CDC and its regional CDCs, the key coordinator Zhou Yun (Mianyang CDC) as well numerous staff from the CDCs including our interviewers, and local helpers from health system and villages, for data collection and cleaning. We also thank Tony Leung, Anthony Beckman, Arthur Watts and Xin Tu for their assistance with data management and data analysis.
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