Objective: Gratitude, or thankfulness for positive aspects of life, is related to psychosocial well-being and decreased psychopathology, and may reduce suicide risk. We explored four potential hypotheses purported to explain the beneficial outcomes of gratitude (schematic, positive affect, broaden-and-build, and coping), hypothesizing that hopelessness (schematic), depression (positive affect), social support (broaden-and-build), and substance use (coping) would mediate the gratitude-suicide linkage. Participants: 913 undergraduate students from a mid-size, southeastern U.S. university. Methods: Respondents completed online self-report questionnaires including the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised, Gratitude Questionnaire, Beck Hopelessness Scale, Beck Depression Inventory, Duke Social Support Index, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, and Drug Abuse Screening Test. Results: Supporting theory and hypotheses, gratitude was related to less suicide risk via beneficial associations with hopelessness, depression, social support, and substance misuse. Conclusions: The linkage between gratitude and suicide risk appears to be predicated on the beneficial association of gratitude to negative mood and interpersonal functioning.

Suicide affects hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year. Despite many coordinated efforts to address this problem, in multiple domains, these numbers have risen over the last decade. The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide is a relatively recent theory that has received considerable attention and investigation. Perceived burdensomeness is one of the constructs from this theory. The belief that you are a burden on others is a robust predictor of suicidal ideation and, to a less understood extent, suicidal behavior. To my knowledge, few studies have looked at the factors that lead to perceived burdensomeness. This study was conducted to begin to address this gap in the literature. Attributional style, hopelessness, socially-prescribed perfectionism, and self-esteem were identified as potential vulnerability factors for perceived burdensomeness. One hundred twenty individuals were surveyed about these constructs and perceived burdensomeness. Participants were also asked to read three vignettes based on interviews with individuals with lived experiences related to suicide attempts. Following each vignette, participants were asked to report the level of perceived burdensomeness that they anticipated that they would feel in that situation as an additional analogue measure of perceived burdensomeness. It was found that attributional style, socially-prescribed perfectionism, and self-esteem predicted current levels of perceived burdensomeness. Self-esteem was the only variable that predicted analogue levels of perceived burdensomeness, beyond current levels of depression. This exploratory study has the potential to contribute to the literature by guiding and informing future research related to better understanding or reducing perceived burdensomeness.

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<p> Older adults with persistent pain experience reduced physical functioning, increased disability, and higher rates of depression. Previous research suggests that different types of positive and negative expectancies (e.g., optimism and hopelessness) may be associated with the severity of these pain-related outcomes. Moreover, different types of expectancies may interact with perceived control to predict these outcomes. However, it is unclear whether different types of expectancies are uniquely predictive of changes in pain-related outcomes over time in older adults and whether perceived control moderates these relationships. The primary aims of the current study were to 1) examine how the shared and unique aspects of optimism and hopelessness differentially predict changes in pain-related outcomes (i.e., pain severity, pain interference, disability, and depressive symptoms) in older adults experiencing persistent pain over a 10-year and 2-year timeframe and 2) examine whether perceptions of control over one’s health moderate these relationships. The present study sampled older adults with persistent pain who participated in a nationally representative, longitudinal study (i.e., The Health and Retirement Study) at three timepoints across a 10-year period. First, confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to determine appropriate modeling of expectancy variables. Second, mixed latent and measured variable path analyses were created to examine the unique relationships between expectancy variables and changes in pain-related outcomes over both a 10- year and 2-year period. Finally, mixed latent and measured variable path analyses and PROCESS were used to test perceived control as moderator of the relationships between expectancy variables and changes in pain-related outcomes over time. CFA results suggested that measures of optimism and hopelessness were best understood in terms of their valence, as positive (i.e., optimism) or negative (i.e., pessimism and hopelessness) expectations. Results from path analyses suggested that only negative, not positive, expectancies were significantly associated with worsening pain severity, pain interference, disability, and depressive symptoms across both 10-year and 2-year periods. Moderation analyses demonstrated inconsistent results and difficulties with replication. However, post-hoc path analyses found that perceptions of control over one’s health independently predicted some changes in pain-related outcomes over time, even when controlling for expectancies. Altogether, the current findings expand our knowledge of the associations between expectancies and pain by suggesting that negative expectancies are 10 predictive of changes in mental and physical pain-related outcomes across years of time. The current study also suggests that positive and negative expectancies may be related, but distinct factors in older adults with persistent pain and that health-related perceived control may be predictive of changes in pain over time. The current discussion reviews these extensions of our current knowledge in greater detail, discusses the potential mechanisms driving these relationships through a theoretical lens, and identifies the implications of this work. </p>

Attribution theory holds that the affective reaction and mood that people develop in response to a situation is to a great degree dependent on what they perceive has caused the situation. Self-blame is a specific result of certain attributions and often leads to depression. The main purpose of this study is to determine if a relationship exists between a specific, character-related linguistic bias and an increased risk for, and an elevated level of, depression. This is accomplished by comparing subjects' test results in a measure of linguistic bias with the Beck Depression Inventory score and with a measurement of attributional style. Further, by drawing on the philosophical basis of cognitive therapeutic practices, it is argued that self-blame is only related to depression if it is characterological in nature and that such characterological self-blame is implicit in the linguistic style of the individual. Elevated usage of the verb "to be" in evaluating a negative life event was found to correlate with an above-average level of the somatic symptoms of depression. Subjects who preferred "to be" sentences also made more attributions of stability in regard to the hypothetical negative scenarios. Very little correlation was obtained between depression levels and depressogenic attributions. It is argued that while the usage of specific words and the application of depressogenic attributions are confounded, the use of two separate questionnaires both related to a common vignette permits some separation. While linguistic bias does not explain the development of depression, it is at least as good a correlate as attributional style. Depressogenic biases in word usage may be the conscious expression of attributional style. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

After being dumped by the love of her life, a woman hopes to spite her ex and her commandeering mother by ‘ending it all’ - but each attempt to kill herself gets thwarted by her inability to do it right.

Background: Links between later life depression (LLD) and adverse health outcomes are well-documented, with mental ill-health in rural older adults highlighted as a priority area for health care policy. In working age adults, models of depression show that specific psychological factors (e.g. hopelessness, neuroticism, extraversion and insecure attachment) interact with life stress to increase risk of depression. In older adults, however, the direct relationship between depression and hopelessness is inconsistently replicated. In addition, there is little evidence regarding how psychological factors interact with vulnerability to depression in older adults; and whether these factors act in the same manner as they do in working age adults. Objectives: A systematic review was carried out in order to determine the strength of the depression-hopelessness relationship, and the influence of personality traits (neuroticism/ extraversion) and insecure attachment (anxious/ avoidant) on this relationship. Next, an exploratory study was carried out to determine whether there was a direct relationship between depression and hopelessness in rural older adults living in the community and, secondly, whether this relationship was indirectly influenced by specific psychological factors (e.g. neuroticism, extraversion, and attachment styles). Methods: The systematic review was carried out using several databases (Psychinfo, Science Direct, EBCOS, Cohrane Library, PROSPERO, WEBCAT and Google Scholar). Studies relating to the variables of interest, meeting inclusion and exclusion criteria, were reviewed and evaluated for methodological biases. The pilot study asked older adults (N = 58) living in a remote and rural region to complete and return a packet of self-report questionnaires (Big Factor Inventory-10, Experiences in Close Relationships, Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, and the Beck Hopelessness Scale). Results: The systematic review identified twenty-one studies; four examining the depression-hopelessness relationship and seventeen investigating the effects of neuroticism, extraversion and insecure attachment styles on wellbeing, depression and/ or hopelessness. Findings from the pilot showed a direct relationship between depression and hopelessness in rural community dwelling older adults, with only neuroticism indirectly influencing this relationship. Conclusions: The systematic review suggests that it is not possible, as yet, to draw robust conclusions from the existing evidence base regarding the influence of psychological variables on depression and hopelessness in older adults. The findings were particularly sensitive to methodological limitations (e.g. variability between sampling methods and small effect sizes). Despite this, studies suggest some evidence for attachment and personality influencing on the depression-hopelessness relationship. Likewise, findings from the pilot study are limited by the small sample size and cross-sectional nature of the data. Preliminary findings, however, suggest that neuroticism, and not beliefs about insecure attachment, strengthens the relationship between depression and hopelessness in non-clinical, rural older adults. These findings are consistent with research on working age adults and could, potentially, represent an emerging relationship in non-clinical older adults. Further research, however, is required as to whether the same patterns are observed in clinical populations.