Original Articles THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDAL IDEATION AND ITS RISK FACTORS AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF LAHORE

Bushra Sabir, Ruqayya Awan, Zarabia Pervaiz Butt, Saira Amir, Lubna Azam

Abstract

Background

Suicide is an important public health problem and medical students constitute a vulnerable group to suicide. It is important to estimate the magnitude of suicidal ideation and its various predictors, as it is often a precursor warning leading ultimately to the act of actually taking one’s own life. This study was conducted to determine the frequency of suicidal ideation and various factors among medical students.

Material and Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted among 250 medical students of Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore. An equal number of male and female medical students from the first to the final year were recruited using the nonprobability purposive sampling technique. A structured, self-administered, pre-validated questionnaire was used for data collection. After obtaining informed consent from the participants, information was collected from study participants regarding gender, marital status, residential status, and family status along with recent suicidal ideation, self- harm, and related risk factors. SPSS version 21 was used for data entry and analysis.

Results

The mean age of respondents was 20.8 + 1.8 years. Regarding residential status, 81.6%of respondents were hostelling and 18.4% were day scholars. Around 69.6% of students had self-reported anxiety/depression as well. The frequency of lifetime and recent suicidal ideation among medical students was found to be 17% and 23.6% respectively. Around 16% of students had a history of deliberate self-harm attempts.

Conclusion

A high frequency of suicidal ideation, self-harm attempts, and self-reported anxiety/depression among medical students was observed in the study which is an alarming situation and reflects that effective suicide prevention programs must be urgently developed for medical students to tackle the issue.