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Childhood Maltreatment and College Students' Current Suicidal Ideation: A Test of the Hopelessness Theory
Author(s) -
Gibb Brandon E.,
Alloy Lauren B.,
Abramson Lyn Y.,
Rose Donna T.,
Whitehouse Wayne G.,
Hogan Michael E.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1521/suli.31.4.405.22042
Subject(s) - psychology , causality (physics) , clinical psychology , suicidal ideation , context (archaeology) , sexual abuse , developmental psychology , depression (economics) , self destructive behavior , test (biology) , poison control , suicide prevention , medicine , medical emergency , biology , macroeconomics , economics , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics
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.