Children'S Attitudes toward Suicide

Abstract

Suicide in children is a topic with a substantial literature, much current concern, and some areas of investigation such as attitudes virtually untouched. The participants of this study were 116 junior high school students who were administered a fifty-six item Suicide Opinion Questionnaire. The results reflect the complexity of attitudes toward suicide and a wide heterogeneity of responses, as well as substantial commonality. A content analysis yielded nine clusters of items, including the relationship between psychopathology and suicide, suicide as a cry for help, and personal values. Children relate depression but not mental illness to suicide, appreciate the attention-getting aspects of suicide attempts but ascribe a greater degree of lethality to these attempts, seem aware of the difficulties in identifying suicide risks, and do not accept suicide as a reasonable solution to incurable illness. Approximately one in five children indicates seriously thinking about suicide, and a somewhat higher number have personally known someone who committed suicide.