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Perfectionism as a Predictor of Suicidal Risk in Turkish College Students: Does Loneliness Contribute to Further Risk?

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Abstract

In the present study, we examined perfectionism and loneliness as predictors of suicidal risk (viz., depressive symptoms & suicide ideation) in a sample of 288 (170 females and 118 males) Turkish college students. Results of conducting hierarchical regression analyses indicated that certain dimensions of perfectionism, namely, doubts about actions and parental criticism, accounted for significant variance in both depressive symptoms and suicide ideation. The inclusion of loneliness as a predictor was found to predict additional unique variance in both suicidal risk measures, beyond what was accounted for by perfectionism. Results of predicting suicide ideation, controlling for depressive symptoms, indicated that parental criticism was the only significant perfectionism dimension to emerge. However, loneliness continued to account for a significant amount of additional unique variance. Some implications of the present findings for understanding suicidal risk in Turkish students are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The second author would like to acknowledge Tae Myung-Sook and Chang Suk-Choon for their encouragement and support throughout this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Sciences, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Mine Muyan

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Edward C. Chang

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  1. Mine Muyan
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Correspondence to Edward C. Chang.

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Conflict of Interest

Mine Muyan and Edward C. Chang declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board at the university where the study was conducted.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individuals participating in the present study.

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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

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Muyan, M., Chang, E.C. Perfectionism as a Predictor of Suicidal Risk in Turkish College Students: Does Loneliness Contribute to Further Risk?. Cogn Ther Res 39, 776–784 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9711-7

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