There’s Something Really Awesome But Dark About Women Who Have Tattoos

A Texas Tech research team led by sociology professor Jerome Koch surveyed 2,395 students from six different universities to find out the correlation between tattoos and self-esteem, depression and suicide attempts.

Fifty-nine percent of the study’s respondents were female, and 82% were between 18 and 20 years old.

An analysis of their answers revealed that women with four or more tattoos reported significantly higher levels of self-esteem than women who had less than four tattoos or none at all. Among all respondents, women with four or more tattoos reported having the highest levels of self esteem.

Paradoxically, however, women with four or more tattoos were four times as likely as women with no tattoos to have attempted suicide at least once.

Men with four or more tattoos were found to be three times as likely as men with no tattoos to have attempted suicide.

A poll conducted last year by Fox News found that 20% of U.S. adults have at least one tattoo. Women under the age 35 were found to be nearly twice as likely as their male counterparts to have been tattooed (47% vs. 25%).