The Role of Optimism in experience of Student Stress and Suicidal Ideation

Suicidal behavior and ideation among adolescents is prevalent problems in almost every country that warrant considerable attention. While a variety of factors have been linked to suicidal ideation, only few studies have examined role of stress and optimism among adolescents population. This study aimed to determine the relationships between stress and optimism and suicidal ideation among adolescent students. Participants for this study were 200 adolescent students from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India. Appropriate questionnaires were used for measuring optimism, stress, and suicidal ideation among students. Apart from descriptive statistics for analyzing data, a four-step hierarchical linear regression analysis was used in order to examine main and moderator effects predicting suicidal ideation. Significant moderating effects were also probed and plotted through simple slopes at plus-and-minus one standard deviation of the stress on the association between stress and suicidal ideation within each level of moderator variable i.e. high and low levels. The results of the Pearson’s correlation analysis showed that there was significant positive relationship between stress and suicidal ideation. A significant negative correlation between optimism and suicidal ideation was also found. In addition, boys were more pessimistic and had more suicidal ideation compared to girls. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that stress and optimism predicted suicidal ideation for total sample and for both boys and girls. Moreover, the Stress X Optimism interaction was found to further augment the prediction of suicidal ideation, even after controlling for demographic variables and the main effects of optimism and stress. Consistent with the proposed interaction model, a plot of the significant interactions indicated that the link between stress and suicidal ideation was significantly more exacerbated for pessimistic as compared to optimistic adolescents. Findings from this study would help the healthcare professionals, counsellors, teachers, and parents in understanding how high stress which is peculiar to the stage of adolescence particularly students may have serious consequences in the form of suicidal ideas and that optimistic thinking may be helpful in coping with the stresses of this stage so as to avoid its harmful effects.