Appraisals and Suicidality: The Mediating Role of Defeat and Entrapment

Abstract

This study tested whether feelings of defeat and entrapment mediated the effects of negative appraisals upon suicidal ideation and behavior. A sample of 93 university students who reported some degree of suicidal ideation completed questionnaires of negative appraisals of social-support and problem-solving, defeat, entrapment, hopelessness and suicidality. The results supported a model whereby defeat and entrapment fully mediated the effect of appraisals of social support and problem-solving ability upon suicidality. Furthermore, controlling for hopelessness had no substantive impact upon this model. The findings support socio-cognitive models of suicidal behavior and highlight the key role of defeat and entrapment in suicide. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• appraisal
• defeat
• entrapment
• hopelessness
• suicide

Notes

¹This adjustment involves a multiplicative scaling of the original chi-squared test statistic of the form c = 1 – [(2p + 4k + 5)/6(n – 1)], where p = the number of measured variables and k = the number of latent variables. For the current sample this resulted in c = 0.965, for the model not including hopelessness and c = 0.961, for the model including this variable.

*p < .05.

^a Correlations only provided for transformed variables.