Abstract

This study examined the moderating effects of problem-solving and social support on the relationship between child abuse and suicidal ideation. Experimental group was 1st- and 2nd-grade senior highschool students. The total number of observations were 370 students, who were 169 male students and 201 female students. The instruments of the study were problem-solving inventory, social support scale, scale for suicidal ideation, and scale for experiences of child abuse. To explore the relationship between these variables, correlation analysis was implemented. Then hierarchical multiple regression analysis was applied to test how significantly the experiences of child abuse, problem-solving, and social support variables explain the scale for suicidal ideation. The moderating effects of problem-solving ability and social support variables on suicidal ideation was also examined by the analysis. In the result, emotional child abuse showed the highest relation to adolescent's suicidal ideation. In the correlation analysis, physical abuse, child neglect, witnessing to parental violence, and sexual abuse variables showed some significance. However, in the level of explanation, child neglect, emotional child abuse, and complex abuses only showed some significances. Especially, it was confirmed that complex abuses had strong relationship because complex abuses explained scale for suicidal ideation with high significance. The moderating effects of social support and problem solving variables on the relation between suicidal ideation and experiences of child abuse existed significantly. This is because suicidal ideation was lower in the group of high social support than in the group of low social support. For the groups of experiences of child abuse, the group who had problem solving ability had lower suicidal ideation than the group who had not it.