Suicidal Thoughts and Planning for Suicide among the 2007-2013 Entrance Medical Students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences

Suicide is an intentional self-harm behavior leading to death that is more common in young people aged 15-24 years. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of suicidal thoughts and planning for suicide among medical students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences.
In this cross-sectional study, all 300 Entrance 2007-2013 medical students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences were included by census sampling. Among them, only 265 students (88%) agreed to participate in this study. Data were collected by using Beck standard suicide questionnaire. Data analysis was performed by using descriptive and analytical statistics like Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests.
The participants included 126 male and 139 female medical students. Among them, 75.84% had no suicidal thoughts, 18.11% had suicidal thoughts, 4.15% were susceptible for committing suicide and 1.88% had a plan for suicide attempt. There was a significant relationship between suicidal thoughts and gender (P=0.017), living area (P=0.026), history of chronic disease (P=0.042), history of mental disorder (P=0.002), and smoking (P=0.049).
The results show that the risk of suicide is high in medical students. Therefore, preventive strategies should be performed for preventing suicidal thoughts and committing suicide.