Results: Students with suicidal ideation or attempted
suicide reported a lower level of life satisfaction and
high degree of psychache than counterparts without
suicidal ideation or attempt. Regression analyses
indicated that life satisfaction and psychache were
significantly associated with the risk of suicidal ideation
and the risk of suicidal attempt. Though psychache
showed a relatively stronger predictive power than life
satisfaction, the effect of the two factors remained
significant when they were individually adjusted for
personal demographic characteristics. However,
when the two factors were included in the model
simultaneously to adjust for each other, psychache
could fully explain the association between life
satisfaction and suicidal attempt. Life satisfaction
remained to contribute unique variance in the statistical
prediction of suicidal ideation.
Conclusions: Psychache and life satisfaction both
have a significant predictive power on risk for suicidal
behaviour, and life satisfaction could relieve the
predictive power of psychache when suicidal behaviour
is just starting. Shneidman’s theory that psychache is
the pre-eminent psychological cause of suicide is
perhaps applicable o