Alternatively, due to their acute nature, hopelessness and
depression severity may have predictive value for a short time span,
perhaps just in the days or weeks before an attempt, but less value
for the long-term prediction of attempted suicide such as the 10-
year time span in the present study. Though some have found
that scores on the Beck Hopelessness Scale predicted suicide death
10 years in the future (Beck et al., 1985), others found that hopelessness
no longer accounted for unique variance after accounting
for depression diagnosis and baseline ideation level (Beck and
Steer, 1989; Brown et al., 2000). This pattern suggests that hopelessness
may relate to future suicidality because of its association
with mood disorder diagnoses and past suicidal ideation.