University students' suicidal thoughts and influencing factors

This research was planned as a descriptive study for the purpose of examining the suicidal thoughts of first-year university students and the factors that might affect them. The research was conducted with the participation of first-year students (class of 1992) at Ege University between January 2003 and October 2004. The research data were collected on a form prepared by the researcher to determine the university students' socio-demographic characteristics and their suicidal thoughts, the trait anger, expression of anger inventory and the brief symptom inventory. It was determined that 2.4% of the students had suicidal thoughts, and 11.2% of the students had previously attempted suicide. The risk factors of the students' suicidal thoughts were determined to be issues of gender, school problems, family relationships, anger expression, somatization, hostility, psychotic symptoms, phobic anxiety, anxiety disorder and interpersonal sensitivity.