Student Stress and Suicidal Ideation: The Role of Social Support From Family, Friends, and Significant Others

To improve the prevention of student suicide, we investigated associations between stress, social support (from family, friends, and significant others support) and suicidal ideation. A sample of 200 adolescent students (100 boys and 100 girls) completed measures of demographic variable, stress, social support, and suicidal ideation. Findings of correlational analyses suggest that there is significant positive correlation between adolescents stress and suicide ideation and significant negative correlation between perceived social support (from family, friends, and significant others support) and suicide ideation. Results of hierarchical regression analyses suggest that stress and family support are important predictors of suicidal ideation for all i.e., for total sample as well as for subgroups-boys and girls. Moreover, Stress X Family Support interaction was found significant in predicting the outcome for total sample and adolescent boys. However, no significant interaction was found in predicting suicidal ideation in girls. For both total sample and boys, post hoc analyses of the significant interactions indicated a consistent pattern in which low family support exacerbated the association between stress and suicidal ideation. Findings suggest that helping adolescents and their parents to develop more supportive social relations may be helpful in alleviating stress to decreasing suicidal ideation among adolescents.