Procrastination, perceived well-being and suicide risk in nursing students

Abstract

Objective: the aim of this work was to study the relationship between academic procrastination, perceived well-being and suicide risk in a sample of Spanish nursing students. Method: 128 students took part, 100 women and 28 men, who answered an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire containing the Tuckman Procrastination Scale (TPS), Plutchik’s Suicide Risk Scale (SRS) and the short version of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ-SF). The statistical analysis included the calculation of descriptive indices, the Student’s t-test for independent samples and Pearson correlation coefficients (r). Results: on the three scales applied, men obtain higher scores than women, although without statistical significance in any of them. The procrastination measure correlates positively with suicide risk and negatively with perceived well-being, in both cases significantly. Discussion: the results obtained highlight the inverse relationship between procrastinating behaviours and perceived well-being. They also suggest that students with a tendency to procrastinate and a low level of personal satisfaction may be more vulnerable to suicidal ideation and behaviour. The importance of teaching staff in the detection and guidance of those students who may present suicide risk is raised.