A Factorial Representation of Suicidal Ideation Among Academically Gifted Adolescents

Suicidal ideation assessment has been employed as an early screening method for identifying adolescents who are at risk for engaging in suicidal behaviors. While recent evidence has emerged that gifted adolescents do not have a higher rate of suicidal ideation, research on the psychological and personality characteristics of gifted youth have demonstrated that they differ from nongifted students in their mental representations of self. Therefore, this study examined the factorial representation for suicidal ideation among an academically gifted population. The results reveal the structure of suicidal ideation for the gifted sample in this study differs from the established normal sample. Further, the factorial representation outlined for suicidal ideation in the gifted sample supported the suicide trajectory model (Stillion & McDowell, 1996), providing a theoretical base for future intervention and refined assessment.