A comparison of child rearing styles and mental health between the parents of individuals committed suicide and the parents of the common people

Background and Suicide is a death committed by the individual himself and is not an occasional and meaningless action. On the contrary, it is a way to escape from a problem or crisis that bothers the individual. The aim of this research is to compare the child rearing styles and mental health of parents of individuals committed suicide and that of common people. The present research is a causal comparative research. Statistic sample of the study group includes 196 parents of individuals committed suicide that have been randomly selected. Statistic sample of control group includes 196 parents of common people who have been selected with multiple stage sampling. In order to measure child rearing styles, the Baumrind’s child rearing questionnaire and for mental health comparison, Goldberg's mental health questionnaire were used. The data was analyzed with multiple variant variance analysis tests and co-variance analysis tests. The results of this research indicate that the parents of common people enjoy higher mental health in comparison to the parents of individuals committed suicide. Moreover, by examining each of child rearing styles, we find out that the difference between the logical authority style and rejecting style, in these two groups, is not meaningful. Vice versa, the difference of autocratic style among two groups is meaningful. This means that the parents of individuals committed suicide use autocratic method more than the other group.. The results of the present research indicate that it is expected that the children of parents with a higher level of mental health exhibit the lower amount of suicidal attempts than the children of the parents who have got mental disorders. Also, it became apparent that the authoritarian style of the parents in child rearing increases the probability of the children’s suicide attempt. Therefore, instructing the appropriate child rearing styles and serious attempts of health care officials in improving health levels are recommended.