Components of hopelessness about the future in parasuicide

Hopelessness about the future is an important component of depression in general and suicidal behavior in particular. Despite this, little research has examined the concept of hopelessness. A study is reported which adapted a verbal fluency paradigm to examine the ease with which hospitalized parasuicides, hospital controls, and nonhospital controls were able to think about future positive (things they were looking forward to) and future negative (things they were not looking forward to) events. The parasuicide subjects showed a deficit in being able to think of future positive events, both for the immediate future and for the longer-term future. but there were no differences between the groups on being able to think of future negative events. Several possible explanations of the results are discussed and some suggestions are made for future research.