Social Hopelessness and College Student Suicide Ideation

The present study examined the relationship between suicide ideation and various predictive psychological factors in order to improve upon existing models of student suicidality. Specific attention was paid to social hopelessness, an interpersonal form of hopelessness, in the prediction of suicidality. A sample of 143 college students completed measures of suicide ideation, daily stress, depression, general hopelessness, and social hopelessness. As expected, correlational results demonstrated that suicide ideation was associated significantly with daily stress, depression, general hopelessness, and social hopelessness. However, a discriminant function analysis found that depression and social hopelessness were the only factors that discriminated between the 2 groups. Overall, the results support a multidimensional predictive model of student suicide ideation.