Patterns of life events preceding the suicide in rural young Chinese: a case control study

Previous studies on the Chinese suicide found some life events prior to the suicide different from those in the West, but there is a lack of summary of the Chinese life event patterns to better understand the effects of the social structure on Chinese suicide.

We tried to identify the life events that precede the Chinese rural youth suicides and compare them with what are found in the West, so as to find the patterns that are particularly true in the Chinese culture contexts.

Suicide cases were investigated with a psychological autopsy study in rural China, and local community living controls were also interviewed with the same protocol.

We collapsed 64 negative life events into six categories: (1) Marriage/Love, (2) Family/Home, (3) Work/Business, (4) Health/Hospital, (5) Law/Legal, (6) Friend/Relationship. About 92.3% of the suicides studied had experienced at least one type of negative life events. The three most common negative life events categories in the past one year were Family/Home (60.7%), Health/Hospital (53.8%) and Marriage/Love (51.3%) in the rural young suicide victims.

Among the negative life events, those related to family relations, love affairs, and marital issues were most likely to precede a suicide of rural suicides in China, and it is especially true of rural young women. Family is an important social institution in rural China for suicide prevention efforts.