Garcia-Fernández D, Fernández-Salinero S, Giorgi G, Topa G, Marcos Del Cano AM. The Impact of Suicide Utility Perception on News over Terminally Ill Patients' Suicide Attitudes: A Pilot Study.
Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021;
18:ijerph18168784. [PMID:
34444533 PMCID:
PMC8394576 DOI:
10.3390/ijerph18168784]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2021] [Revised: 08/13/2021] [Accepted: 08/14/2021] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
Suicide represents a very important issue in public health. For approaching attitudes toward suicide, we have developed an instrument that, following previous recommendations, assesses specific thoughts related to the perception of suicide utility in the press. First of all, we will test the psychometric properties of the scale we created ad hoc for assessing suicide utility perception. After that, we expect to find that the suicide utility perception in the press will have a statistically significant impact on positive attitudes toward terminally ill patients' suicide (Hypothesis 1). In addition, this relationship will be mediated by suicide legitimation (Hypothesis 2). This mediation will be moderated by depressive symptomatology (Hypothesis 3). The sample was composed of 66 Spanish participants. Suicide legitimation was significantly related to the positive evaluation of terminally ill people's euthanasia. Finally, when the levels of depression's psychological concomitants increased, the support for terminally ill people's euthanasia increased as well. Implications and limitations have been discussed.
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