Childhood maltreatment and college students' current suicidal ideation: a test of the hopelessness theory.
Few studies have examined the relation between childhood maltreatment and adult suicidality within the context of a coherent theoretical model. The current study evaluates the ability of the hopelessness theory of depression's (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989) etiological chain to account for this relation in a sample of 297 undergraduates. Supporting the model, emotional, but not physical or sexual, maltreatment was uniquely related to average levels of suicidal ideation across a 2.5-year follow-up. Further, students' cognitive styles and average levels of hopelessness partially mediated this relation. Although these results cannot speak to causality, they support the developmental model evaluated.
Gibb
B E
BE
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122-6085, USA. bgibb@astro.temple.edu
Alloy
L B
LB
Abramson
L Y
LY
Rose
D T
DT
Whitehouse
W G
WG
Hogan
M E
ME
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D006380:Helplessness, Learned; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012737:Sex Factors; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*