Citation

Gibb BE, Alloy LB, Abramson LY, Rose DT, Whitehouse WG, Hogan ME. Suicide Life Threat. Behav. 2001; 31(4): 405-415.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122-6085, USA. bgibb@astro.temple.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, American Association of Suicidology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11775716

Abstract

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.