Causes of Suicide Among College Students

Suicide means an individual intentionally to adopt various means to end his life. It has been the second leading cause of death among college students (Caruso, n. d. ). The problem is getting serious in developing country such as Hong Kong and the ways to suicide had transformed to a mass suicide attempt on December 21, 2009 (Mak, 2011). These rising issues are telling us that suicide had becoming one of the most crucial matter that need to be resolve before it affect our future leader. So, we will review based on the past research for the alcohol and family relationship factors that contribute to suicide among college students.

One of the factors that contribute to suicide among college student is alcohol consuming. Several past researches have been found to support this factor. An early study by Lamis, Ellis, Chumney and Dula (2009) claimed that many college students are experiencing heavy alcohol consumption and alcohol use are correlated with suicidal behaviour. This study is to check different levels of risk for alcohol-related problems and their relation to reasons for living among college students (Lamis et al. , 2009).

287 participants were recruited and divided into three alcohol groups, that are low-risk, moderate-risk and high-risk group (Lamis et al. , 2009). The hypothesis was made that participants in the high-risk group will report fewest reasons for living (Lamis et al. , 2009). RFL self-report measure was used to check how important a reason would be for living on participants. Besides that, AUDIT test also used to identify individuals whose experiencing alcohol-related problems (Lamis et al. , 2009).

As the result, the high-risk group had fewer moral objections to dying by suicide compared to the low-risk group (Lamis et al. , 2009). From the experiment, we can see that obsessive alcohol use may lower student moral objections to suicide (Lamis et al. , 2009). Another experiment conducted by Lamis, Malone, Langhinrichsen-Rohling and Ellis (2009) stated that alcohol consuming will increase the risk for engaging in suicidal behaviours. This factor is strengthen when Powell and colleagues (2001), as cited in Lamis et al. 2009) found out that high alcohol drinking quantity will creates a greater likelihood of a serious suicide attempt.

318 participants were recruited and few measuring scale was used to predict the result for this experiment. The result tells that depression is predictor of alcohol use in young adults. Besides that, alcohol use are negatively correlated with body protection and the results suggests that individuals who are potentially involve in high-risk behaviours, such as suicide are usually from the one who have less tendency to protect themselves (Lamis et al. , 2010).

Reference

http://www.suicide.org/college-student-suicide.html