The Effects of Stress on Suicidal Ideation among Suicide Prevention Center Users: Mediating Effects of Depression and Moderated Mediating Effects of Social support

Objectives The purpose of this study was to verify whether depression mediates the relationship between stress and suicidal ideation among users of suicide prevention centers and whether the mediating effect of depression is moderated by social support. Methods The subjects of this study were 202 users of local suicide prevention centers located in 22 cities such as Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon, Gyeongsang, Chungcheong, and Busan. Stress, depression, social support, and suicidal ideation were measured, and the response data were analyzed in IBM SPSS 28. and Process macro v4.2 were used to analyze the results. Results The higher the stress level of suicide prevention center users, the higher the level of depression, and the mediating effect of social support in the process of influencing the occurrence of suicidal ideation was significant. This suggests that although an individual's response to stress leads to a decrease in quality of life and more suicidal ideation through depression, social support can better control suicidal ideation. Conclusions Based on this, the basis for academic and clinical intervention was presented by suggesting the direction of evaluation and research on subjects with suicide problems.