Family Support as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Loneliness and Suicide Risk in College Students

Abstract

In this study, we examined loneliness and family support as predictors of suicide risk (viz., depressive symptoms and suicide ideation) in college students. The sample was comprised of 456 Hungarian college students. Results of conducting hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for sex and age, indicated that the inclusion of family support provided further incremental validity in predicting both depressive symptoms and suicide ideation, beyond the variance accounted for by loneliness. Moreover, consistent with the notion that family support might buffer the negative effects of loneliness on suicide risk, evidence for a significant Loneliness × Family Support interaction effect in predicting both indices of suicide risk was found. Thus, beyond the role of loneliness in predicting suicide risk in college students, the present findings are the first to show how family support both additively and interactively represents a positive psychological resource that should be considered in understanding suicide risk among students.