Big Five Personality Factors and Suicidal Ideation Among Adolescents

Abstract

Approximately one million people commit suicides every year in world and adolescents constitute the most vulnerable group (WHO, 2012). There may be many risk factors including personality for suicidal ideation acts. In view of the above, this study was conducted to examine the effects of big five factors of personality on suicidal ideation. 80 adolescents enrolled from various colleges of Nashik, aging between 14 to 18 years sample. NEO-PI-R (McCrea & Costa, 1992) was administered to assess their personality in terms of extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, open to experience and conscientiousness. Its reliability ranges from 0.89 to 0.93. Adult Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (ASIQ) by William M. Reynolds, the internal consistency reliability as well as test-retest reliability of ASIQ was investigated using coefficient alpha, and index. The analyses of the data revealed that personality factors such as Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness correlates negatively with Suicidal Ideation whereas the factor Neuroticism correlates positively with Suicidal Ideation. The proposed hypotheses were approved. The findings are discussed in the light of related previous researches and implications, suggestions and limitations are also highlighted.