The Predictive Role of Positive Mental Health for Attitudes Towards Suicide and Suicide Prevention: Is the Well-Being of Students of the Helping Professions a Worthwhile Goal for Suicide Prevention?

Patryk Stecz; Alena Slezáčková; Katarína Millová; Katarzyna Nowakowska-Domagała

doi:10.1007/s10902-019-00163-1

The Predictive Role of Positive Mental Health for Attitudes Towards Suicide and Suicide Prevention: Is the Well-Being of Students of the Helping Professions a Worthwhile Goal for Suicide Prevention?

J Happiness Stud. 2020;21(6):1965-1984. doi: 10.1007/s10902-019-00163-1. Epub 2019 Aug 5.

Authors

Patryk Stecz¹, Alena Slezáčková², Katarína Millová³, Katarzyna Nowakowska-Domagała¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Preventive and Addiction Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Lodz, Smugowa 10/12, 91-433 Lodz, Poland.
² Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Arna Novaka 1, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
³ Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Veveří 97, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic.

Abstract

This study evaluates the potential value of eudaimonic well-being in assessing pro-preventive orientation towards suicide and recognizing suicide as a solution. The aim was to integrate positive and negative conceptualizations of mental health for predicting attitudes towards suicide, and towards suicide prevention, among students of the helping professions. The study participants (166 women and 73 men, mean age 22.84 ± 5.15) answered a set of questionnaires, including a Questionnaire on Attitudes Towards Suicide, Goldberg Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWB-42) and Centrality of Religiosity Scale. Multiple regression analysis showed that environmental mastery, purpose in life and positive relationships, controlled for religiousness and psychological problems related to general mental health, predicted the variability of attitudes towards suicide and pro-preventive orientation. Sociodemographic variables were not related to attitudes towards suicide. Our findings suggest that positive mental health, represented jointly by low mental health problems and eudaimonic components of happiness, plays a role in predicting pro-preventive attitudes. Therefore, improving positive mental health among students in the helping professions, these being the future gatekeepers, could be considered an auxiliary strategy for suicide prevention.

Keywords: Attitudes towards suicide; Helping behavior; Hierarchical multiple regression; Mental health problems; Positive mental health; Potential gatekeepers; Psychological well-being.