Social problem-solving and suicidality in adults: Commentary on a meta-analytic review.

Heapy et al. (2024) have provided a quite capable meta-analytic review of the associations between social problem-solving and parameters of suicidality.In this commentary, we note some reactions, implications, and suggestions for future research.It is our impression that the concept of specificity is somewhat underemphasized in this area of research.By "specificity," we mean at least two things: (a) is it social problemsolving specifically that is associated with suicidality, or are other forms of problemsolving associated as well?and (b) does social problem-solving associate with suicidality specifically, or does it similarly correlate with neighboring constructs like depression, hopelessness, anxiety, etc.? Regarding whether social problem-solving per se or problemsolving in general is operative in risk for suicidality, it is noteworthy that the main measure used in research on social problem-solving contains item content that ranges beyond the social domain-an issue that researchers in this arena may wish to continue to examine in future efforts.The issue of whether social problem-solving effects are related to suicidality specifically, or also correlates with neighboring constructs like depression, hopelessness, anxiety, etc. brings us to a second point: Heapy et al. show admirable awareness of specificity issues in their inclusion of studies that control for depression and hopelessness in analyses on the social problem-solving-suicidality relationship.Moreover, they note that there is at least some evidence that the social problem-solving-suicidality association survives the covariance of depression and hopelessness.This is particularly notable because, despite it being a standard approach to covary depression out of suicidal ideation in the latter's prediction, it is also a fraught practice, in that it is somewhat difficult to understand what exactly remains in suicidality once depression is taken out of it.What exactly is nondepressotypic suicidality (see Rogers et al., 2018)?The same issues attach to the construct of hopelessness.Covariance analyses alone leave open the question of the structural interrelations between variables such as social problem-solving, suicidality, and depression.For instance, it seems quite plausible that depression might lead to both social problem-solving deficits and to suicidality; this may be the case to an extent but only to an extent, because the covariance