Latent profiles of emotion coping behaviors among college students with suicidal thinking

Objective: Rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors are elevated among college students. Improved understanding of the emotion coping strategies employed by college students is critical for informing suicide interventions teaching coping skills. Participants: The current study involved 334 college students who completed momentary questions about suicidal and self-harm thinking and daily questions about coping behaviors for 8 wk. Method: We conducted latent profile analysis to derive subgroups based on their engagement of coping behaviors and compared outcomes of suicidal/self-harm thinking across subgroups. Results: The best fitting model yielded three subgroups: (1) "low engagers" with a low frequency of coping behaviors; (2) "selective engagers" who most frequently endorsed mindfulness, acceptance, distraction, avoidance, and intentional no coping; and (3) "broad engagers" with a broad repertoire of effective and ineffective strategies. Engagement in a broad repertoire was associated with less suicidal or self-harm thinking, whereas no outcome differences were found between those with limited or narrow repertoires. Conclusions: The results provide empirical evidence for the importance of arming college students with a variety of coping strategiesfor suicide intervention and prevention purposes.