Background & Aims: Gender identity is a fundamental factor in human life, which accompanies him from the beginning to the end of his life, and represents a person's stable emotional and cognitive experience of his gender and objective manifestations of a specific gender. In Iran, the number of people suffering from sexual boredom is estimated to be approximately 150 thousand people. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition, gender identity disorder is diagnosed based on the fact that a person continuously and intensely assumes the opposite gender identity for himself; An identity that does not belong to another gender simply because of the desire to benefit from cultural privileges. Restlessness, dissatisfaction, confusion, or gender boredom is a situation in which a person experiences a lot of confusion and anxiety due to the inconsistency between the gender assigned to him at birth and his gender identity. Therefore, dissatisfaction with one's gender makes the family and society always expect them to accept the roles appropriate to their biological sex and blame them for having movements and behaviors similar to the opposite sex. They put pressure and this causes these people to withdraw and reduce their self-esteem. Most of the people suffering from sexual boredom have a lot of interpersonal conflicts and they form one of the most victimized minorities, and they are not being accepted by their family and society and their isolation has consequences such as suicidal thoughts in them. Therefore, one of the most important problems of these people can be suicidal ideation. Emotion regulation is related to constructs such as self-compassion. Self-compassion is the extent of kindness and compassion towards oneself or deep awareness and empathy towards the suffering of others. Also, research background has shown that dissatisfaction with gender identity affects self-concept and identity in patients with gender boredom. This means dissatisfaction with their gender identity can make people with gender dysphoria show less self-compassion towards themselves. On the other hand, the special conditions in which these people are located increase the risk of creating problems related to mental health for them, and in the meantime, the perceived social support protects them. Since there is little research on the predictive role of emotion regulation, self-compassion, and perceived social support on suicidal ideation of people suffering from sexual boredom, to solve this research gap, the question of whether ideation has been answered. Can suicide processing be predicted based on emotion regulation, self-compassion, and perceived social support in people suffering from sexual boredom?
Methods: The research method is descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of the research was all the people suffering from sexual boredom in Tehran in 2019-1400, approximately 150,000 people. The sample size of 300 of these people were selected based on Klein's (2016) point of view and the available non-random sampling method (online method) and according to Beck et al.'s suicidal ideation scale (1979), Gross's emotion regulation questionnaire and John (2003), Neff's (2003) self-kindness or self-compassion scale, and Zimmet et al.'s (1988) Multidimensional Social Support Scale answered. The collected data were analyzed using Pearson's correlation coefficient and multivariate regression analysis.
Results: The results showed that there is a significant relationship between emotion regulation, self-compassion, and perceived social support with suicidal ideation (P<0.01). The results of multiple regression analysis also revealed that 54.8% of the variance of suicidal ideation is explained by emotion regulation, self-compassion, and perceived social support.
Conclusion: The purpose of this research was to investigate the prediction of suicidal ideation based on emotion regulation, self-compassion, and perceived social support in people suffering from sexual boredom. The results showed that cognitive reappraisal and emotional suppression (as emotion regulation strategies) can predict suicidal ideation. Emotional suppression can make a person weak against suicidal thoughts and prone to suicide. In this way, when a person evaluates a negative event in his mind with negative strategies such as emotional suppression, he looks at this event with a more negative view and considers its possible short and long-term positive aspects less. As a result, he experiences more depression and despair, so he is more prone to suicidal ideation. People suffering from sexual boredom in Iran are under more pressure from society due to religious, social, and cultural restrictions and they experience high psychological and social pressure that these cases make them prone to suicide. Therefore, sexually bored people who tend to experience their negative emotions uncontrollably from society, the possibility of using the strategy of emotional suppression increases in them, and most of them lack the necessary skills to manage and regulate negative emotional experiences They are inconsistent and have more suicidal thoughts. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that emotion regulation strategies can predict suicidal ideation. To make the results more generalizable, it is suggested that students and researchers repeat such studies in other cities to provide evidence of the obtained relationships. It is suggested that the model of the present study, i.e. suicide ideation based on the regulation of emotions and compassion in people suffering from gender boredom, should be investigated and compared by gender, i.e. in men and women. The use of longitudinal studies and other research methods (a combination of qualitative and quantitative) can be more beneficial for this study. In this way, it is suggested to use a qualitative study (studies of lived experience and descriptive phenomenology) to examine the factors affecting suicidal ideation in people suffering from gender boredom. The achievements and consequences of this research can be presented at two theoretical and practical levels. At the theoretical level, the research findings can help to expand the existing knowledge, concepts, and models in the field of suicidal ideation, especially in people suffering from gender boredom, by explaining how the variables of emotion regulation and self-compassion influence. Also, the results of the present research can pave the way for more recent research to expand emotional and psychological knowledge in the field of factors influencing the formation of suicidal ideation in these people.