Citation

Troister T, D'Agata MT, Holden RR. Psychol. Assess. 2015; 27(4): 1500-1506.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/pas0000126

PMID

25915787

Abstract

The current research evaluates the effectiveness and relative merits of 3 screening measures (the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, and the Psychache Scale) in evaluating preexisting suicide risk factors for a sample of 7,522 undergraduate students. All measures demonstrated significant diagnostic accuracy for indicating suicide ideation, previous single and multiple suicide attempts, and a recent suicide attempt, which are all serious risk factors for subsequent death by suicide in university students. However, the Psychache Scale displayed superior performance in accurately identifying suicide risk compared with both the Beck Depression Inventory-II and the Beck Hopelessness Scale. Identifying students most at risk for suicide requires diagnostically efficient measures, thus preliminary cut-scores for identifying at-risk students are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record

Language: en