Experience Sampling of Future Thinking and Suicidal Ideation Among Adolescents

Adolescents' future thinking abilities shape their perceptions of life beyond the present moment. Here, we harnessed ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to test how adolescents' future thinking abilities relate to their prior and ongoing instances of suicidal ideation (SI).

We recruited 80 community-based adolescents (M = 15.84 years), including those with recent history of suicidal ideation (i.e., SI group) and those with no history of suicidal ideation or attempt (i.e., no-SI group). The sample was mostly female (gender, 67.1%; sex, 76.0%), heterosexual (55.1%), non-Hispanic (86.1%), and racially diverse (64.6% racial minority group membership). Participation involved adolescents meeting with the research team to complete baseline clinical assessments, followed by completing up to 70 EMA surveys (5/day) across two weeks.

Adolescents overall tended to imagine their future approximately one-third of the time, and these future thoughts referred to the short-term, were action-oriented, and perceived to be mild-to-moderately positive. When assessing future thinking according to SI history, we found that the SI Group displayed more frequent and uncontrollable future thoughts compared to the No-SI Group-though these group comparisons seemed to be accounted for by depression and anxiety symptoms. When assessing future thinking and concurrent SI via EMA, we found that adolescents' momentary experiences of SI were often accompanied by negative, intrusive, repetitive, and uncontrollable thoughts about the distant future-with temporal distance and emotional impact being especially robust correlates of concurrent SI.

How adolescents perceive their future relates to their prior and ongoing experiences with suicidal ideation.