Understanding Suicidality and Correlates Among Chinese Secondary School Students in Hong Kong

This study investigated the factors associated with suicide ideation & attempts among a representative sample of 3,383 secondary school students in Hong Kong. Youth risk behaviours such as heavy smoking, episodic heavy alcohol drinking, early sexual experience, & feeling hopeless were found to be associated with both suicidal thoughts & attempts. Misuse of drugs was the only factor that related solely to attempts & involvement in physical fighting was the only factor solely related to suicide ideation. The addition of suicide ideation is a significant explanatory variable of suicide attempts over & above health risk behaviours. (56 refs.) JA