Abstract

Adolescence is a crucial phase of one’s life, given the physical and psychological changes that occur during this phase. Number of adolescent suicides are on rise and a large number of adolescents report higher suicidal ideations during this phase. Suicide ideation involves thoughts and cognitions about suicidal behavior. It involves thoughts related to desire, intent or method of committing suicide. Research on suicide ideation has established strong links between depression and hopelessness with suicidal thoughts and tendencies. Depressed adolescents are reported to be highly vulnerable to develop suicide ideations. In addition to depression and hopelessness, familial variables like support from parents and emotional bonding with them is detrimental to such outcomes like suicide ideation. The present study thus aims to find depression, hopelessness, emotional autonomy and hardiness as predictors of suicide ideation in female adolescents. A sample of 242 females in the age group of 15 – 22 years was taken. Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Steer and Brown, 1996),Beck Hopelessness Scale (Beck et al., 1974), Personal Views Survey (Kobasa and Kahn, 1982), Emotional Autonomy Scale (Steinberg and Silverberg, 1986) and Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (Beck, Steer and Ranieri, 1988) were used to collect the data. The data so obtained for the predictor variables was first factor analysed so as to obtain independent factors. The factor scores from this factor were further used in linear regression in order to predict suicide ideation in female adolescents. Regression analysis revealed that the factor was a significant predictor of suicide ideation. The obtained results have been elucidated.