Characteristics, causality, and suicidal behavior: a qualitative study of family members with suicide history in Wonogiri, Indonesia
Article Category: Original article
Published Online: Jul 14, 2020
Page range: 169 - 178
Received: Nov 04, 2019
Accepted: Dec 07, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/fon-2020-0016
Keywords
© 2020 Susana Nurtanti et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Objective
This study explored the characteristics, causality, and suicidal behavior among family members with suicide history in Wonogiri, Central Java, Indonesia.
Methods
Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 family members who had made suicide attempts. The interviews directly explored the relationships among characteristics, causality, and suicidal behavior. The research data were analyzed using the Miles and Huberman approach.
Results
The results indicate that there are relationships among characteristics, causality, and suicidal behaviors. The characteristics contributing to suicide attempts were male gender, age (adolescence and old age), lack of religious activities, introvert nature, low economic status, chronic diseases, unemployment, and a history of family members with suicide attempts. The causality of suicide was joblessness, economic crisis, unemployment, family conditions, personality disorder, depression, sickness, and suicide ideation.
Conclusions
The findings highlight the relationships among characteristics, causality, and suicidal behaviors. Suicide occurs when individuals have some problems that they cannot solve because of the lack of family support. The causal factors were related to one another, which caused the suicidal behavior. One of the most effective suicide prevention strategies is educating the community on how to identify suicidal signs and increase social supports.