Examining the relations between hopelessness, thwarted interpersonal needs, and passive suicide ideation among older adults: does meaning in life matter?

Abstract

Older adults are at an elevated risk for passive suicide ideation. The interpersonal theory of suicide and the 3-step theory may provide a framework to better understand factors that contribute to passive suicide ideation among older adults. Specifically, this study aimed to test components of prominent suicide theories and examine the role of meaning in life in the associations between hopelessness, thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and passive suicide ideation among older adults. Participants were 243 adults aged 60 and older recruited from primary care settings in the southwest United States. We hypothesized that high meaning in life would weaken the associations between hopelessness, thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and passive suicide ideation. Results from moderation analyses indicate that meaning in life was a significant moderator of the associations between hopelessness and passive suicide ideation, thwarted belongingness and passive suicide ideation, and perceived burdensomeness and passive suicide ideation. These findings suggest that when meaning in life is low there are significant negative associations between hopelessness, thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and passive suicide ideation among older adults. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Keywords:

• Older adults
• meaning in life
• interpersonal theory of suicide
• three-step theory
• passive suicide ideation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Analyses were also conducted with depressive symptoms, Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977) total scores, entered as a covariate. Overall, this did not change the pattern or statistical significance of the results. The model for hypothesis 2 had slight inconsistencies, which reflect potential suppression effects (Cohen & Cohen, 1975) or issues due to covarying. When covarying for depressive symptoms, the main effect of thwarted belongingness changed sign (but not significance) and the simple slopes became significant at more extreme values of the moderator. Additionally, previous literature suggests that covarying may produce results that are atheoretical and lack clinical utility (Lynam, Hoyle, & Newman, 2006; Rogers et al., 2018); therefore, results were presented not controlling for depressive symptoms.