Abstract:

Objective To investigate the relationship between attitude towards commit suicide and meaning in life in poverty-stricken university students, and explore the mediating effect of subjective wellbeing on the development of attitude towards commit suicide. Methods Stratified random sampling was adopted to select 1 100 students from 5 universities, and the survey on attitude towards commit suicide and meaning in life was conducted. Questionnaire of suicide attitude (QSA), meaning in life questionnaire (MLQ), purpose in life test (PIL) and index of well-being (IWB) were employed, and the attitude towards commit suicide and related factors in poverty-stricken university students were analyzed. Structural equation model was constructed to explore the mediating effect of subjective well-being on attitude towards commit suicide and meaning in life. Results A total of 1 038 effective questionnaires were recovered, with the response rate of 94.4%. There were 316 poverty-stricken university students, and the other 722 were non-poverty-stricken university students. The scores on subjective well-being, attitude towards people with commit suicide and life experience in poverty-stricken university students were significantly lower than those in non-poverty-stricken university students (P<0.05). Among poverty-stricken university students, female students had significantly higher scores than male students in attitude toward families of people with commit suicide (P<0.05), while male students had significantly higher scores than female students in pursuit of meaning in life, purpose in life and sense of ownership (P<0.05). The attitude towards commit suicide was closely related to meaning in life and subjective well-being in poverty-stricken university students (P<0.05, P<0.01). Subjective well-being partially had the mediating effect on meaning in life and attitude towards commit suicide. Conclusion Meaning in life and subjective well-being may have important effect on the attitude towards commit suicide in poverty-stricken university students, and individualized life education should be conducted in universities.

Key words: poverty-stricken university students, attitude towards commit suicide, meaning in life, subjective well-being