Teenagers who have attempted suicide tend to be more aggressive and prone to substance abuse than those who are suicidal but have not made a suicide attempt, a local think tank said Wednesday.

The National Youth Policy Institute analyzed data on 95 students in Busan who were categorized as “suicidal,” and looked at conduct disorder, addiction to drugs or alcohol, and the tendency to be impulsive or aggressive.

Researchers found a meaningful correlation between suicide attempts and both substance addiction and aggressiveness. In addition, they discovered that this propensity increased as the number of suicide attempts went up.

“Being aggressive and hostile is a sign of repressed anger. Authorities need to provide therapeutic counseling to help teens cope with various forms of stress and frustrations that they go through,” said lead researcher Seo Soo-gyun, a professor of psychology at Pusan National University.

In recent years, the rapid increase in youth suicides has raised an alarm within Korean society.

According to the Korea Health Promotion Foundation, the number of suicides per 100,000 teens in 2011 stood at 5.58, a 57 percent increase from 3.19 in 2001.

The rapid increase in adolescent suicides in Korea was in stark contrast to most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

From 2000 and 2010, the number of suicides in the 10-24 age group among OECD countries fell from 7.7 to 6.5 per 100,000. The suicide rate for Koreans in that age group surged from 6.4 to 9.4, the fifth-highest among the 34 member nations.

Only Chile, with 53 percent, marked a faster growth rate of suicides than Korea in that age group.

Stress and depression were the main factors in the soaring youth suicide rate.

Another KHPF survey showed that 29.1 percent of the teens have suffered from severe depression at least once a month, and over half of the respondents answered that they thought it was “better not to live.”

The main reasons behind their depression were their grades at school, physical appearance, feuds with their parents and anxiety about the future.

By Yoon Min-sik ()


minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com