Socio-demographic correlates and psychosocial stressors among suicide attempters attending a tertiary care general hospital

Abstract Introduction: Suicide is a rapidly growing and critical public health concern in India and around the world. Interpersonal, social, familial, psychological along with genetic vulnerabilities were important risk factors for suicidal attempts. Methods: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study done at King George Hospital, Visakhapatnam. All the suicide attempters admitted to the General Medicine department were evaluated at the psychiatric department. A total of 117 patients were included in our study with convenient sampling. Beck’s suicide intent scale, Presumptive stressful life event scale, and semi-structured proforma for socio-demographic and clinical variables were used to assess the study participants. Results: Financial struggles (19.6%) and conflict with family members (14.5%) were the stressful life events among most of the suicide attempts. Most of the study sample used pesticide consumption (20.5%) as the commonest mode of suicidal attempt. The majority of the suicide attempters (53%) had medium suicidal intent. There was a significant association between marriage and stressful life event score (p=0.001). The use of pesticides was significantly higher among men than women (p=0.002) and the use of household agents was significantly high among women than men (p=0.013). Conclusion: Psychosocial stressors also play an important role in attempting suicide and hence to prevent suicidal attempts, there is a need for the development of innovative strategies to decrease the stigma, to improve coping skills and to promote help-seeking from mental health services.