Testing the escape theory of suicide in an outpatient clinical population

To test the Baumeister's Escape Theory of Suicide, 132 clinical outpatients at two different sites completed measures of life events, multidimensional perfectionism, depression, hopelessness, reasons for living, and suicide ideation. A structural equation model yielded significant paths from socially prescribed perfectionism to depression, depression to hopelessness, hopelessness to both reasons for living and suicide ideation, and reasons for living to suicide ideation. A path analysis showed that the proposed model had a strong overall Goodness of fit index. Results strongly support the escape theory of suicide in outpatients who might be particularly vulnerable to suicidal thoughts, mostly because of the expected relationships of depression, hopelessness, reasons for living, and suicide ideation.