Page No.213-218
Anjana Bhattacharjee and Sibnath Deb
University of Calcutta, Kolkata
Depression is one of the few psychological disorders that can be said to be fatal. Of all the consequences of depression, suicide is, of course, the end consequence of the individual’s feeling of hopelessness and debility. Although it is obvious that people also commit suicide for reasons other than depression, depressed people are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than non-depressed people. The broad objective of the present study was to ascertain the suicidal tendencies among depressive patients. A group of 118 depressive patients was covered in the study and they were selected from different Government and Private Health Care Centers following incidental sampling technique. Data were collected by Background Information Schedule and Suicidal Tendencies Inventory. Three hypotheses were formulated and were verified by applying suitable statistical tests. Findings revealed that suicidal thoughts among depressive patients and normal population of same age group differed significantly (p<. 01) which indicates that depressive patients have lost hope in life and wish to end their lives. Suicidal tendencies of depressive patients across chronicity of the disease also differed significantly (p< .01) which indicates that the depressive patients who were suffering from depression for more than last one year possessed more suicidal thoughts as compared to the depressive patients who were suffering from depression for the last one year. However male and female depressive patients did not differ significantly in regard to suicidal tendency