Identifying the Predictors of Suicide Ideation, Suicide Planning, and Suicide Attempts among High School Students in the Philippines from four nationally representative datasets

Using four datasets obtained from the World Health Organization’s Global School-based Student Health Surveys (GSHS) for the Philippines (2003, 2007, 2011, 2015) that involved high school students from private and public educational institutions in the country, the study aimed to discover the significant risk and protective factors of suicide ideation, suicide planning, and suicide attempts among the population under study. Results of the study identified several significant predictors of suicide risk from the four timeframes with two factors emerging as the most salient: (1) lack of sleep and (2) number of close friends emerging as the most salient push and pull factors of suicide respectively. This finding highlights the need for greater integration with one’s peer groups during a person’s life in secondary education and brings to fore the necessity to rethink the amount of activities that high school students engage in at the expense of their sleeping hours. The implications of the results of the study, particularly of the two most salient predictors of suicide, are discussed in the paper.

Keywords: Suicide, Suicide Ideation, Suicide Planning, Suicide Attempt, Filipino Youth