[Suicidal characteristic-clusters for rural young victims aged 15-34 in three provinces, China: a case controlstudy]

To explore the categories on suicide and their characteristic-clusters among rural young people of Chinese aged 15-34 in three provinces to provide evidence for suicide prevention.

A total number of 392 suicidal deaths and 416 live controls sampled from 16 counties of Shandong, Liaoning, Hunan provinces in China, were included in this study. Psychological Autopsy and Classification Tree methods were employed. Two informants were interviewed to collect the information of each subject.

Expectation on future, mental disease, seeking guidance and support were important factors for the classification of suicide among rural young population, and their scores of standardized importance were 100, 97, 91 and 76, respectively. Desperation (including feeling about the future and expectation) seemed to be more important than mental disease, with 6-8 more scores on standardized importance. Five categories of rural young suicides were determined. Desperate people or patients with mental disease but with less desperation were the main two categories, accounting for 64.8% and 11.8% respectively. Sensitivity and specificity of this classification tree were 84.34% and 92.08%, respectively.

For programs on suicide screening and prevention, evaluation on desperation seems more significant than screening on mental disease.