earticle

영어

Purpose: Smoking is one of the most important global health issues. This study aims to investigate how smoking behavior and the amount of smoking affect the youth's suicidal ideation. Methods: This study utilized the data of the Sixth Online Survey on Youth's Health Behavior. The subjects of the study were 73,238 middle school and high school students. Collected data were analyzed using SAS 9.3. The relationship between general characteristics and suicidal ideation among smokers and nonsmokers was analyzed through the x2-test. Also, a multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate how smoking behavior and the amount of smoking affect suicidal ideation. Results: According to the study, adolescent smoking and suicidal ideation had a statistically meaningful relationship. In terms of suicidal ideation, those who smoked more than 20 cigarettes everyday had 1.81times higher odds ratio (95% CI 1.49~2.20) and those smoking 10~19 cigarettes everyday had 1.29times higher odds ratio (95% CI 1.13~1.48) than nonsmokers. Both of the results were found statistically significant. Conclusion: With regard to smoking adolescents, smoking behavior and the amount of smoking affect their suicidal ideation in a statistically meaningful manner. Current smokers are proven to have more suicidal ideation than nonsmokers. In addition, the study shows that the more a person smokes in a daily basis, the more suicidal ideation he/she has. The author recommends this result be utilized as basic data for the prevention of smoking among the Korean youth.