Suicide Attempts and Perceived Social Support among Chinese Drug Users: The Mediating Role of Self-Esteem and Depression

Yali Deng, Xuemeng Li, Liu Liu and Wing Hong Chui
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Yali Deng: School of Social Work, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
Xuemeng Li: The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY 10016, USA
Liu Liu: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Wing Hong Chui: Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 18, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Suicidal behavior is a severe problem among drug users. This study examines influential factors related to suicide attempts and analyzes possible mediators of the relationship between perceived social support and suicide attempts amongst Chinese drug users under compulsory institutional drug treatment. Taking perceived social support as the independent variable, we found that the relationship between suicide attempts and perceived social support is mediated by self-esteem as a protective factor and depression as a risk factor. Path analysis shows that self-esteem contributes relatively more to the indirect effects than depression does, accounting for 31.1% and 24.2% of the total effect, respectively. Generally speaking, the findings of this study point to an urgent need for addressing suicide attempts among Chinese drug users while treating self-esteem as the protective factor that deserves as substantial attention as depression receives.

Keywords: suicide attempts; perceived social support; depression; self-esteem; Chinese drug users (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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