Stability amidst turmoil: Grit buffers the effects of negative life events on suicidal ideation

Highlights

• We collected two waves of data on a general student population.

• We examine grit, suicidal ideation, and life events across two time points.

• Negative life events predicted suicidal ideation only when grit was low.

• Grit buffers the relationship between negative life events and suicidal ideation.

Abstract

The goal of the current study is to examine the role of grit as a resilience factor that reduces the risk for suicidal ideation conferred by negative life events. Participants (N=209) completed measures of negative life events and grit at baseline and a measure of suicidal ideation at follow-up four weeks later. Poisson regression analyses found that higher levels of grit buffered the relationship between negative life events and suicidal ideation such that negative life events only predicted suicidal ideation if grit was low. These results suggest that high grit can abate the increased suicidal ideation associated with negative life events. Aside from absolute levels of suicidal ideation, being able to predict or buffer dramatic shifts in suicidal ideation can be a useful diagnostic tool during interventions.

Introduction

Every year over 39,000 people die of suicide in the United States, accounting for 1.4% of all deaths (CDC, 2014). In addition to the high rate of completed suicides, considerably more people contemplate suicide at some point (9.2% of the general population; Nock et al., 2008). This is concerning as suicidal ideation predicts future suicidal behavior (e.g., Baca-Garcia et al., 2011). With these statistics, it is difficult to debate the need to examine factors that confer risk for suicidal ideation as well as factors that can offset this risk. Negative life events are one of the most strongly supported risk factors for suicidal ideation, attempts, and completions (for a review, see Liu and Miller, 2014). The goal of this study is to examine grit, a psychological strength involving perseverance through adversity to reach long-term goals (Duckworth et al., 2007) as a potential resilience factor to the risk for suicidal ideation conferred by negative life events.

Negative life events are related to increased frequency (Sandin et al., 1998), intensity and duration (Fergusson et al., 2000; Joiner and Rudd, 2000) of suicidal ideation. Negative life events are more likely to serve as triggers for suicidal ideation when interacting with underlying person-level risk factors (Mann et al., 1999). For instance, negative patterns of thinking and maladaptive information processing in response to negative life events relate to a greater likelihood of depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation (e.g., Hankin and Abramson, 2002, Riso and Newman, 2003). Similarly, the interaction between loneliness and negative life events is a better predictor of suicidal ideation compared to either loneliness or negative life events alone (Chang et al., 2010). Thus, aspects of an individual can strengthen the effects of negative life events on suicidal ideation, but several aspects can also weaken these effects.

Although evidence suggests a clear link between negative life events and suicidal ideation, negative life events do not automatically lead to suicidal ideation - implicating the presence of resilience factors (i.e., moderators). At least some of these moderators are specific, person-level (i.e., trait) resilience factors (Cha and Nock, 2009; Hirsch et al., 2009) such as positive cognitive styles (Hirsch et al., 2007, Kleiman et al., 2012), self-determination (Bureau et al., 2012), and hope (Davidson et al., 2009). These trait resilience factors are especially useful for preventing suicidal ideation and for reducing the impact of negative life events by altering a person׳s cognitions regarding what these events mean. Furthermore, measuring individuals on these factors can give insight into who may be more or less at risk to suicidal ideation after negative life events. Given that not everyone possesses the skills to flexibly adapt their cognitions to minimize the impact of negative life events, exploring other avenues by which a person׳s individual differences can buffer the effects of negative life event on suicidal ideation would be fruitful.

Grit involves passionate perseverance toward long term goals, especially through obstacles and adversity (Duckworth et al., 2007). That is, a gritty individual shows consistent interest in a goal (passion) and works toward this goal consistently (perseverance). While other stability-related factors (such as conscientiousness and self-control) have been studied as buffers to suicide (Lapierre et al., 2007), the construct of grit represents a unique facet of personality that may be especially adept at buffering against negative life events. Although similar, conscientiousness and self-control both represent shorter-term goal orientations than grit (Duckworth and Gross, 2014). Negative life events, in turn, may be on a small scale, or a large enough scale such that only extremely long-term passion and perseverance (i.e., grit) would serve as an adequate buffer. Thus, gritty individuals are defined by their ability to push through hardships, such as negative life events, whereas individuals high in conscientiousness or self-control need not explicitly be resilient to setbacks.

Little work, however, has been conducted on if and why gritty individuals are buffered against risk factors for suicidal ideation. One study suggests that certain gritty individuals (those higher in feelings of gratitude) are more adept at creating meaning in life, which serves as a mechanism to reduce suicidal ideation (Kleiman et al., 2013). While grit is internal and future-focused, gratitude is more external and past/present focused. Therefore, the combination of a gritty and gracious individual provides many complimentary cognitive strategies as buffers. This provides initial evidence that grit lowers an individual׳s suicidal ideation - on average. However, it is unclear how negative life events might impact this relationship. We believe that grit will buffer against negative life events because gritty individuals are able to focus beyond these immediate events to their long-term goals. This future-focused orientation is generally considered a more optimistic and hopeful orientation, as opposed to any present-fatalistic orientation (Zimbardo and Boyd, 1999). Thus, in times of crisis brought on by negative life events, we would expect the positive and future-focused cognitive-attributional style of gritty individuals to confer the same benefits that the negative and present-focused cognitive-attributional style of hopeless individuals negates (Beck et al., 1975). This research and theory leads to our primary hypothesis: negative life events will only positively predict suicidal ideation when grit is low.

In the present study we examined if grit buffered the relationship between negative life events and suicidal ideation. We hypothesized that grit will moderate the relationship between negative life events and later suicidal ideation. Specifically, individuals with more grit will show a weaker positive (or nonexistent) relationship between negative life events and later suicidal ideation than individuals with less grit.