Need for Affect, Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide, and Suicide Proneness

Abstract

The present study expands upon the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS), examining its relationship with the need for affect (NFA), a construct explaining attitudes toward seeking both positive and negative emotions. A sample of 576 emerging adults completed measures of NFA, IPTS, suicide proneness, and demographics online. Findings include NFA accounting for a small significant amount of suicide proneness, a positive association between approaching emotions and one indicator of suicide proneness, negative association between approaching emotions and thwarted belongingness, and positive associations between avoidance of emotions with both perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness. Findings are discussed concerning NFA as a theoretically and practically relevant factor for understanding suicide.

Keywords:

• emotional avoidance
• need for affect
• perceived burdensomeness
• suicide proneness
• thwarted belongingness

Notes

1 Further demographic breakdowns available upon request.

2 Students were drawn from the department-wide undergraduate research pool, and potential participants self-selected participation from a number of study opportunities. The student sample, therefore, is not a convenience sample of investigators’ own students.

3 F-tests for basic demographic associations and follow-up examinations are available as an online supplement.

4 As a revised 7-item ACSS was published after data collection, an evaluation creating this shorter measure with existing items was performed. The analyses with this 7-item ACSS did not yield any meaningfully different results patterns concerning IPTS or need for affect analyses. The reliability was the same as the 20-item measure and hypothesis testing with the shorter ACSS did not change any statistical significance or meaningful effect sizes.

5 Univariate effects for demographic and IPTS variables available as online supplement.