Abstract
Thwarted belongingness is an established predictor of suicide ideation. Emerging theory suggests belongingness may be a crucial pathway through which risk factors such as dysfunctional emotion regulation influence suicide ideation. This study examined whether belongingness mediated the relationship between emotion regulation and suicide ideation in young people (16–25 years). Participants (n = 1699; 63.6% females, M = 20.24 years, SD = 2.45 years) completed measures of these constructs, including the emotion regulation domains of internal-functional, internal-dysfunctional, external-functional, and external-dysfunctional. Belongingness mediated over half of the association between three emotion regulation domains and suicide ideation (internal-functional: 55.6%, internal-dysfunctional: 54.1%, and external-functional: 64.8%). Consistent with current etiological suicidality models, results suggest low belongingness is an important precursor to suicide ideation in young people, and that there is an inter-relationship between emotional regulation styles and belongingness.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the members of the original study “How well are young Australians?”, especially Prof Leanne Hides, for sharing the earlier study data for use in the current study’s data analysis. We would also like to thank Rachel Kelly for her valuable editorial and research assistance.
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G.S. conceived of the study, contributed to study design, interpretations, conducted analyses, wrote the manuscript and contributed to revisions; I.S. helped conceive the study, contributed to study design, interpretations, conducted analyses, and revisions; W.C. contributed to study design, interpretations, conducted analyses, and revisions; and L.H. consulted on design and analysis, contributed to provision of data for this study, and participated in revisions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Human Research Ethics Committee (exemption no: 1600000943) where this study’s research procedures were carried out.
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Swee, G., Shochet, I., Cockshaw, W. et al. Emotion Regulation as a Risk Factor for Suicide Ideation among Adolescents and Young Adults: The Mediating Role of Belongingness. J Youth Adolescence 49, 2265–2274 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01301-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01301-2