Grateful individuals are not suicidal: Buffering risks associated with hopelessness and depressive symptoms

• Since suicide is a leading cause of death, research on protective factors is needed.
• We examine gratitude as a protective factor in suicide.
• Gratitude buffers the relationship between suicide ideation and hopelessness and depressive symptoms.
• Since gratitude is highly modifiable, gratitude may be useful in suicide interventions.

With suicidal behavior serving as a leading cause of injury and death around the world, researchers must expand ongoing efforts to uncover protective factors. In this study, we examined if gratitude mitigated existing risk factors for suicide. Specifically, we predicted that gratitude moderates the relationship between suicidal ideation and (a) hopelessness and (b) depressive symptoms in a sample of 369 diverse undergraduate students. Results indicate that for people who are highly grateful, both hopelessness and depressive symptoms are less likely to be associated with thoughts and intentions to kill oneself. The findings demonstrate the value of integrating protective factors against suicidality, including character strengths such as gratitude, into existing theories that tend to be limited to vulnerability factors. We offer tentative ideas for enhancing the impact of suicide prevention and intervention programs by directly addressing gratitude, which has been shown to be highly modifiable.