Relationships of hopelessness, depression and previous suicide attempts to suicidal ideation in alcoholics.

Abstract

The risk of suicide in alcoholics is high (1), and Rushing (2) has concluded that 7-21% of alcoholics eventually commit suicide, compared with approximately 1% of the general population. Explanations of the high suicide rate among alcoholics have ranged from psychoanalytic observations that alcoholism itself is a form of selfdirected hostility (3) to empirical contrasts between the demographic characteristics of nonsuicidal and suicidal alcoholics (4). One of the most supported contentions is that alcoholics are suicidal because they are depressed (5-8). Ho•vever, Beck et al. (9), in studying a sample of 126 alcoholic and 252 nonalcoholic attempted suicides, found that hopelessness, defined in terms of negative expectancies for the future, was a stronger correlate of stficidal intent than was depression. The relationship bet•veen suicidal intent and depression was accounted for mostly by hopelessness. In reviewing measures of suicidal risk, the Task Force of the Center for Studies of Suicide Preventions at the National Institute of Mental Health