Association of chronic disease prevalence and quality of life with suicide-related ideation and suicide attempt among Korean adults

AIMS: The aim of this study is to find the association of chronic disease prevalence (CDP) with suicide-related ideation (SI) and suicide attempt (SA) and to determine the combined effect of CDP and quality of life (QoL) with SI or SA. DESIGN: This was a cross-sectional study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The data were collected from the nationally representative Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey IV and V (2007–2012). For the analysis, a total of 35,075 adult participants were selected as the final sample, which included 5773 participants with SI and 331 with SA. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the odds ratio after adjusting for age, sex, marital status, education, occupation, and household income. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: SI was positively associated with selected CDP, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), stroke, ischemic heart disease (IHD), cancer, diabetes, renal failure, and depression, except hypertension. Subjects with CVD, IHD, renal failure, and depression were found likely to have increased odds for SA as compared to non-SA controls. Lower QoL strongly affected SI and SA. Furthermore, the likelihood of SI increased for depressed and cancer subjects who had low QoL in comparison to subjects with high QoL and without chronic disease. Similarly, statistically, significant interaction was observed between lower QoL and depression in relation to SA compared to non-SA controls. These data suggest that suicide-related behavior could be predicted by the prevalence of chronic disease and low QoL.