Lay Theories of Suicide in Turkish and American Students

The purpose of this study was to compare the lay theories of suicide held by Turkish and American respondents. Measures of attitudes toward suicide and of personality variables were administered to 330 Turkish undergraduates and 419 American undergraduates. Turkish students saw interpersonal factors as less important and societal factors as more important in causing suicide as compared to the American students, and they also reported more stigma toward attempted suicides. Personality correlates of these attitudes were similar in the two groups. The similarities between the two groups of respondents in their theories of suicide outweighed the differences. Copyrights belong to the Author(s). Suicidology Online (SOL) is a peer-reviewed open-access journal published under the Creative Commons License 3.0.