Hopelessness is a feeling of despair and excessive pessimism about the future. Most people experience occasional feelings of hopelessness in loss situations. Such circumstances can be the death of someone close to you, a sudden dismissal from work, a serious illness, a disaster, psychological trauma, and other similar stressful situations. But in this case, the feeling of hopelessness recedes after a while when life circumstances change.
The Beck Hopelessness Scale is a tool that helps to assess the severity of negative feelings about the future.
A pessimistic assessment of one’s future, if it is observed for a long time and is not associated with the presence of tragic events, may be part of the Beck cognitive triad characteristic of depressive disorder, along with a negative assessment of oneself and one’s functioning in the present and past.
If a person suffering from depression makes predictions about the future of his life, then he expects that his problems will continue forever. Such a patient is sure that constant difficulties, despair, inability to satisfy his needs and desires await him ahead. In addition, he does not assume success in any of his endeavors.
The Beck Hopelessness Scale is a valuable tool in the diagnosis of depression. In addition, it serves as an indirect indicator of the identification of suicidal risk in patients with depression and in people who have made suicide attempts in the past.
The Hopelessness Scale was created by Aaron Tiomkin-Beck, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. The questionnaire consists of 20 statements with which the person performing this test expresses his agreement or disagreement. The Likert scale is used to quantify the results .