Rupan Dhillon, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar
Nishtha Mehra, Selection Centre North, Kapurthala
A phase of identity formation is taken over by a turmoil and negative ideation during the adolescent years. The youth is experiencing a challenging time, due to redefinition and reorganization of relationships and societal constitution, driving them towards maladaptive patterns of coping which result in suicide ideations. Thoughts of suicide are regarded as a precursor to suicide completion. A study reports that transition from suicide ideation to suicide plan occurs in 34% and from plan to an attempt in 72%. This study is thus, focusing on the adolescents belonging to the age group of 15-22 years as this is the most vulnerable period in the present times, and exploring the role of depression and hopelessness contributing to suicide ideations. 400 adolescents are a part of this study with almost an equal number of males and females. Various studies have formulated meditational models with suicide ideation as the outcomes and the correlates being depression, hopelessness, insomnia and reasons for living (Bagge, Lamis, Nadorff, & Osman, 2014; Woosley, Lichstein, Taylor, Riedel, & Bush, 2014). The current study is thus, an attempt to find out the meditational role of hopelessness in relationship between depression and suicide ideation among Indian adolescents. The psychological tools administered on the adolescents are Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Steer, &Brown, 1996), Beck Hopelessness Scale (Beck et al., 1974), and Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (Beck, Steer, & Ranieri, 1988). Simple Mediation Analysis is used to study the causal relationships in understanding suicide ideations in the youth today and the role of hopelessness in mediating the relationship between depressions. The meditation model was run using AMOS 21 and all the regression weights predicting suicide ideation were significant and positive. Hopelessness was found to mediate the relationship between depression and suicide ideation and indirect effects were found to be significant (p < 0.01).The results are discussed in light of theoretical framework and empirical research.