Impact of Religiosity and Life Orientation on Attitude of Youths towards Suicide in Lagos, Nigeria: A Religious-Community Based Study

Suicidal behavior is a growing public health problem in Nigeria. More disturbing is the recent rise in reports of suicide cases involving youths. Attitude towards suicide remains one of the strongest indicators of suicide. There is however, paucity of studies addressing this phenomenon among Nigerian young population. The present study therefore investigated the predictive impact of religiosity and life orientation on attitude towards suicide among youths in Lagos, Nigeria. A correlational design was utilized. Four hundred purposively selected young individuals from Christian and Muslim communities comprising of 220 males and 180 females whose ages ranged between 14 and 31 years participated in the study. A structured questionnaire consisting of demographic information, Religious Activity Scale (RAS), Life Orientation Test Revised (LOT-R) and Attitude towards Suicide Scale (ATTS) was utilized for data collection. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test were used to test the hypotheses using SPSS (v. 20). We found a significant gender difference on attitude towards suicide among the participants (t (398) = 25.83; p < 0.01). High degree of religiosity was found as a protective factor against suicidal tendencies as individuals with high religious belief reported unfavourable attitude towards suicide. It was concluded that attitude towards suicide among Nigerian youths is closely linked with their religious belief. We recommend that practitioners implementing suicide prevention programmes should incorporate measures that are appealing to people’s religious beliefs to improve the effectiveness of their programmes. We also recommend future studies to further investigate the relationship between life orientation and suicide among youths in Nigeria