Experiences of violence have been recognized as a serious issue affecting adolescents' suicidal thoughts, especially in crisis situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, which places vulnerable youth in even more precarious environments. While many prior ...
Experiences of violence have been recognized as a serious issue affecting adolescents' suicidal thoughts, especially in crisis situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, which places vulnerable youth in even more precarious environments. While many prior studies have reported the impact of violence experiences on adolescent suicidal thoughts, there is a lack of research that specifically addresses the relationship between violence experiences and suicidal thoughts in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing studies have primarily used data before or after the pandemic to examine this relationship but have not clearly distinguished between the pre-existing effects and those brought on by the pandemic. Therefore, the changes in this relationship due to the COVID-19 pandemic have not been sufficiently analyzed.
This study aims to empirically analyze the independent effects of environmental risk factors, such as experiences of domestic violence, school violence, and cyberbullying, on adolescent suicidal thoughts before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the study examines how these impacts have changed through interaction effects with COVID-19. The study uses data from the National Human Rights Survey for Children and Adolescents, conducted before the pandemic (2019) and during the pandemic (2020), focusing on adolescents who have experienced domestic violence, school violence, or cyberbullying. The analysis uses statistical software R version 4.3.3 to perform frequency analysis, chi-square tests, logistic regression, and interaction effect analysis.
The results show that adolescents with experiences of domestic violence, school violence, and cyberbullying both before and after the pandemic exhibited higher rates of suicidal thoughts. The study found that experiences of physical and emotional violence by parents (guardians), neglect, and cyberbullying had a statistically significant impact on adolescents' suicidal thoughts both before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Emotional violence experienced from teachers did not significantly affect suicidal thoughts before the pandemic, but it became a significant factor after the pandemic. Peer bullying, which was significant before the pandemic, no longer had a significant effect on adolescents' suicidal thoughts after the pandemic. Furthermore, an analysis of the interaction effects between each type of violence and the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a significant interaction effect for emotional violence by teachers. This suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the suicidal thoughts of adolescents who had experienced emotional violence by teachers.
In conclusion, the study indicates that changes in social environments and interaction patterns due to the pandemic have altered the factors influencing adolescents' suicidal thoughts. Combining these findings with theoretical frameworks such as Durkheim’s theory of suicide, it can be argued that adolescents, who suddenly lost the expected social and psychological norms in a transformed environment, may become closely linked to suicidal thoughts. This supports the interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide, which posits that negative and vulnerable psychological states arising from traumatic events and problems in relationships with significant others contribute to the development of suicidal thoughts among adolescents.