Objective: To study the prevalence of mental disorders among the Chinese youths aged 15 - 34 years, in rural areas and to identify risk factors related to suicide.
Methods: A consecutive sampling strategy was used for suicidal cases in 16 randomly selected counties in Hunan, Liaoning, and Shandong provinces. Between 2005 and 2008, a total of 392 suicide cases were recruited with 416 community controls at the same age range, selected from the same areas one family member together with one close friend of each suicidal case were interviewed, using the psychological autopsy (PA) method. The same method with structured instruments was performed on the two informants for each control in the same community. SCID was used for the diagnosis of mental disease.
Results: 48.0% of the suicides were diagnosed as having at least one mental disorder episode, in comparison with only 3.8% among the controls. It was found that mental disorder was the most important risk factor for the Chinese young suicide cases in the rural areas.
Conclusion: As seen in the Western countries, mental disorder had also been the number one correlate on suicidal cases in China, with the difference as other social and psychological factors might have played relatively more important roles in China.