Relationship between community environments and suicide behaviors / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the relationship between the neighborhood environment and the residents' suicidal risk and provide evidence for suicide prevention.Methods The study sample consisted of 392young suicides (aged 15-34 years) and 416 community living controls from the same areas of China (randomly selected from 16 rural counties in three provinces).Social factors in the village neighborhoods were measured by the WHO SUPRE-MISS scale of Community Stress and Problems.Psychological autopsy methods and multivariable Logistic regression were employed.Two informants were interviewed to collect the information of each subject.Results It was found that there was positive correlation between the community surrounding score and suicide.The community stress and problems was the main risk factor for suicide(Wald x2 =10.036,P＜0.05,OR=1.323).Family disputes,inconvenience transportation,lack of health care and job security,alcohol abuse,and superstition can increase the suicidal risks among rural young Chinese.It was still indicated that relative poverty,suffering from a mental illness(OR=32.346) were the risk factors; but good education,married and good health were the protective factors for suicide.Conclusion Further improving the social assistance system,solving the existing community stress and problems,building better community environment are needed to reduce the stress of community residents.Psychological screening and the community mental health intervention for high-risk groups should be strengthened to improve residents' response capacity to stress.Those measures can reduce the suicide rate of China rural community residents effectively.