Suicide Behaviors and Health-Related Quality of Life: Results from the Korean Community Health Survey of 393,073 Adults

Abstract

Background: Suicide is a major public health concern worldwide, but it is largely preventable. Although previous studies have suggested quality of life as a predictor of suicide risk, knowledge about this topic is limited by the small number of available subjects and insufficient information. The aim of this study is to investigate the association between the EuroQoL 5 dimension (EQ-5D) measurement and the risk of suicidal behaviors among adults in arepresentative sample of Korea.

Subjects and Methods: The data were obtained from the 2008 and 2009 Korean Community Health Survey. A total of 393,073 participants older than 20 years were included in this study. These participants had no missing information on questionnaires about the EQ-5D measures, suicide behaviors, and other covariates. Of these subjects, 37,689 experienced only suicide ideation and 1,910 subjects experienced both suicide ideation and suicide attempts.

Results: We found that participants who experienced suicide ideation and/or suicide attempts had significantly lower quality of life than those who had not experienced such behaviors. After adjusting for confounding variables, the estimate of EQ-5D score was lowest in subjects with both suicide ideation and suicide attempts, followed by subjects with only ideation and then subjects without suicide behaviors.

Conclusions: Considering that suicide ideation and suicide attempts are important factors in the likelihood of eventual suicide, assessing quality of life may be beneficial for identifying adults at high-risk of suicide and for reducing suicide-related risks at the population level.