Socioenvironmental and Cognitive Risk and Resources: Relations to Mood and Suicidality Among Inpatient Adolescents

Abstract

Socioenvironmental and cognitive risk and resources were investigated as predictors of mood and suicidality in a sample of 74 adolescent psychiatric inpatients. Socioenvironmental measures included stressful life events, daily hassles, and perceived social support; cognitive measures tapped maladaptive schemas, social problem solving, and global self-esteem. Indices of mood and suicidality assessed depressive symptoms as well as anxiety, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation. In multiple regression analyses, socio environmental measures consistently accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in criterion indices of mood and suicidality. Cognitive measures, entered on a subsequent step of each regression, made significant incremental contributions to prediction for all criterion indices. Cognitive measures, furthermore, were found to mediate the associations of socioenvironmental measures to assessed levels of mood and suicidality, such that evidence of indirect effects involving the three sets of measures was found (e.g., daily hassles → maladaptive schemas → depression). Findings are consistent with socio-cognitive models that emphasize multifactorial and interrelated contributions of cognitive, social, and environmental factors to risk for emotional disturbance during adolescence. A developmentallysensitive, social-contextual paradigm for understanding the role of cognitive factors in adolescent psychopathology is recommended.