Education Effect and the Portability of Recurrent Suicide Attempts in Nazareth During 2013–2014

Farhat Kamal; Bisharat Bishara; Abd-El Qader Amir; Nibal Abu-Ahmad; Farah Joseph; Elia Haj; Bowirrat Abdalla; William Nseir

Volume : III, Issue : VII, July - 2014

Education Effect and the Portability of Recurrent Suicide Attempts in Nazareth During 2013–2014

Farhat Kamal, Bisharat Bishara, Abd El Qader Amir, Nibal Abu Ahmad, Farah Joseph, Elia Haj, Bowirrat Abdalla, William Nseir

Abstract :

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in many developed countries, but in Mediterranean countries this phenomenon was until recently extremely rare. Our previous study, performed during 2005-2012 came to shed lights on the prevalence and the underlying reasons of the notable increase of suicide attempts in the conservative and religious Arab community of Nazareth, Israel. The current study performed during 2012-2014 comes to examine the portability of reoccurrence of suicide attempts among educated individuals and to evaluate the fact whether level of education attainment (calculated by the number of education years/ high academic studies: finished 9th school grade; 11th grade, 12th grade and academic studies respectively) is a protective method or a mechanism that actuates suicide attempts - the results of this study may give a clue or a picture whether education is a risk factor or a protective factor against repeated suicide attempts. In addition, the present study will address the patterns used by attempters in second suicide attempt comp� to the repeated suicide attempts (more than two attempts). Interviews, sociodemographic information, suicide risk factors in addition to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersIV (DSM-IV) diagnoses will be used in current retrospective study of 197 educated suicide attempters in the emergency room at the Nazareth Hospital. Statistical analysis using percentage distribution was used. From figure 1, which presents the data demonstrated on Table 2, we classified the suicide attempters in two groups: suicide attempters who committed previously two suicide attempts and suicide attempters who committed more than two suicide attempts. We examined and compared the effect of education on suicide attempt between the two groups. We observed a roughly two folds increase in suicide attempt among attempters who committed more than two suicide attempt (The 9th school grade (12% vs. 28%); the 11th grade (14% vs. 23.2%); and 12th grade (14.2% vs. 25.7%), whereas, we observed a dramatic decline by twofold among academic subjects to commit more than two suicide attempts (13.3% vs. 6.7% respectively). Other significant finding was notified by comp� academic subjects, regardless of the number of suicide attempts, versus subjects of less education [(20%) vs. (40% (9th grade), 37.2% (11th grade), 39.9% (12th grade) respectively]. We noticed that academic group tend to have a 50% decrease in suicide attempts compared to less schooled groups. Important differences between groups related to the methods used by attempters are also represented in Table -2 and are illustrated in Figure 2. Attempters who left school at the 9th grade used self harm in 40% of cases, while low percentage of higher educated attempters (11th, 12th grades and academic) used this method (12%, 14% and 20% respectively). We observed that drug is the preferred methods for suicide attempters in 11th grade, 12th grade and academic (84%; 81% and 63% respectively). Other variables were examined such as familiar status (single vs. married) and religion effect (Christian vs. Muslim). Neither family status nor religion was found to convey any significant effect on the frequency of suicide attempts (Figure 3).