The Effect of Hope Enhancement Program on Suicidal Ideation of Patients with Major Depressive Disorder
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Abstract
A quasi-experimental study with a control-group pretest-posttest design aimed to investigate the effect of a hope enhancement program on suicidal ideation of patients with major depressive disorder. The sample comprised 48 patients with major depressive disorder aged 20 - 59 years, who had suicidal ideation and were receiving treatment at a tertiary care hospital. Purposive sampling was employed using inclusion and exclusion criteria, and participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, with 24 participants in each group. The experimental group participated in the hope enhancement program for six sessions, 60 minutes per session, conducted three times a week over two weeks, while the control group received routine nursing care. The instrument was the Thai version of the Scale for Suicidal Ideation, which had a content validity index of 0.89 and a Cronbach's alpha reliability of 0.87 Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and t-tests.
The results found that: (1) the mean score of suicidal ideation in the experimental group at posttest (Mean = 0.96, SD = 1.23) was statistically significantly lower than the mean score of suicidal ideation at pretest (Mean = 7.21, SD = 2.95) (t = 15.11, p < .001); and (2) the mean difference of suicidal ideation scores at pretest and posttest in the experimental group (D1 = -6.25, SD = 1.72) was statistically significantly higher than in the control group (D2 = -2.79, SD = 0.71) (t = 7.23, p < .001).
These findings support the effectiveness of the hope enhancement program in reducing suicidal ideation among patients with major depressive disorder. Healthcare professionals could apply this program as a supplementary intervention in clinical practice.
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