[Suicide attempts according to age and sex]

This study reports of a further analysis on the data presented in a previous work. The intention of the present study was to analyse exhaustively the relationship between some social and demographic variables with some aspects of attempts to suicide. The variables for this study were chosen on the basis of the completeness of data. Sex, age, single vs. married, and family relationship of the subjects were the predictive variables; the aspects of attempts to suicide considered were: number, kinds, means, and motives of attempts. An analysis of canonical correlation failed to show clearly any common relationship of the demographic variables in regard to the aspects of attempts to suicide. In fact, the first group of covariates resulted in a correlation of .40 whose chi square was 22.16 for a p less than .10. However, an univariate analysis of multiple regression for each of the four aspects of attempts to suicide over the four demographic variables showed that a) age of subjects has a definite relationship with the motives to commit suicide, that is, with age; the motives to attempt suicide change predominantly from family difficulties to problems of a more social and professional character; b) also, it was observed a generalized tendency on the part of male subjects to show attempts to suicide of a more serious nature, namely, they plan their attempts and make use of means of a more lethal nature (poison instead of simple drugs). However, it must be noted that the male sample was older than the female, making it hard to decide in this case whether age or sex of the subjects would be the best predictor.