자살생각의 사회적 원인에 대한 탐색적 연구: 성별 및 연령대별 비교 검증

This study tested if the social factors (i.e., perception of anomie, unfair distribution and unfair procedure, discrimination and conflict) increase suicidal ideation after controlling for the well-known individual factors such as eonomic, physical, relational, and psychological hardships. Further comparisons among sex and age subgroups were conducted to spur more tailored approaches. The nation-wide data of 3,839 adults were used to construct logit models, which were collected in 2017 by the “Survey of Social Problems and Social Integration” of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. The social factors as a group increased the explanatory power of all models for sex and age subgroups, which suggested that future research on Korean suicidal ideation has to consider social factors more systematically. In particular, the effects of perception of anomie were significant for all subgroups except for the young adults, urging for a special attention. Perception of discrimination and conflict was discovered as a causal factor for male and middle-aged groups, and perception of unfair distribution was significant for the young adults, which suggested that the priority of social renovations could be different depending on the subgroups. The social factors are, in fact, abstract, but could work as real ‘social forces’ impacting the mind and behavior of people, requiring for a serious review of the government. Furthermore, the Korean society puts a traditional emphasis on the solidarity, and is success-oriented in highly competitive contexts, and thus, alienation and powerlessness, injustice and discrimination, disorder and conflict could be more destructive than in western society.