ABSTRACT
In the face of a rising youth suicide rate amongst Chinese youth in Hong Kong, all potential risk factors should be examined, as well as particular psychological indicators of the manifestation of sub-lethal suicidal behaviour, and associated attitudes to self and others, and to suicide itself. Secondary school students frequently experience feelings of suicidality before attempting any such act, and these feelings and associated psychological distress, and the measurement of these feelings along with the identification of potential risk factors is a crucially important task. The identification of pre-suicidal traits and risk factors by means of questionnaires completed by adolescents is the object of the Suicidal Risk Scale (SRS). In constructing a screening instrument for measuring suicidal risk, we explored and adapted several Western instruments. Measures of suicidal risk in the interpersonal environment were academic stress (5 items); family problems (15 items); and interpersonal difficulties (18 items); measures of anger-impulsivity (13 items); depression (11 items); and suicidal ideation (13 items) identified psychological dimensions of suicidal risk. After piloting, these instruments were completed by 595 males and 707 females in forms 1 to 4 of several secondary schools. Females, as expected, displayed more suicidal ideation, planning for suicide, and suicide attempts at some time in the past, than did males. The measures of suicidal proneness and suicidal risk had good internal reliability, and testretest correlation, and their internal structure was confirmed by principal component analysis. Analysis of variance confirmed that the measures in the SRS strongly discriminated between those with none, occasional and frequent suicidal ideation. Guidelines for the use of the SRS by teachers and school counsellors are outlined, with suggestions for future research.
