Asian American College Students’ Suicide Ideation: A Mixed-Methods Study Y. Joel Wong Indiana University Bloomington Kelly Koo University of Washington Kimberly K. Tran Fayetteville State University Yu-Chen Chiu and Yvonne Mok Indiana University Bloomington The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the phenomenon of suicide ideation among 293 Asian American college students. Guided by T. Joiner’s (2005) interpersonal-psychological theory of suicidal behavior, the authors examined the relationships among perceived burdensome- ness, thwarted belongingness, self-construals, and suicide ideation. Compared with thwarted be- longingness, perceived burdensomeness was a more robust predictor of suicide ideation. However, thwarted belongingness moderated the positive association between perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation. Furthermore, interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal both weakened the link between perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation and between thwarted belongingness and suicide ideation. The authors also conducted a qualitative analysis of participants’ open-ended responses about their perceptions of why Asian American college students might consider suicide. The authors identified a core phenomenon of unfulfilled expectations as well as 2 broad themes related to this core phenomenon: unfulfilled intrapersonal expectations and unfulfilled interpersonal expectations, comprising the subthemes of (a) family, (b) relationship, (c) cultural differences, and (d) racism. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for suicide-related clinical interventions and primary prevention efforts among Asian American college students. Keywords: suicide ideation, Asian American, self-construal, interpersonal, college Suicide-related outcomes are an area of growing concern in U.S. college campuses. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among college-aged emerging adults aged 20 –24 (Heron & Tejada-Vera, 2009). In addition, one study found that 24% of college students had thought about attempting suicide while in college (Westefeld et al., 2005). Of further concern are findings from several studies indicating that Asian American college students reported higher levels of suicide ideation than their White American counterparts (Brener, Hassan, & Barrios, 1999; Chang, 1998; Kisch, Leino, & Silverman, 2005). For example, one national study found that the odds of seriously considering attempting suicide were 1.6 times higher for Asian American students as compared with White American students (Kisch et al., 2005). Recent scholarship on Asian American suicidology has focused on risk factors associated with suicide-related outcomes among Asian American adults in community samples (Cheng, Fancher, et al., 2010; Duldulao, Takeuchi, & Hong, 2009) and Asian Ameri- can adolescents (Balis & Postolache, 2008; Else, Goebert, Bell, Carlton, & Fukuda, 2009). The present study extends this body of literature in two ways. First, with the exception of a few unpub- lished dissertations (e.g., Choi, 2008; Jha, 2001) and a published qualitative study (Chung, 2003), our search of the literature could not locate any recent published studies focusing on Asian Amer- ican college students’ suicide ideation. Second, a limitation of contemporary suicidology—including Asian American suicidolo- gy—is that research has composed largely of atheoretical studies rather than a coherent body of knowledge (Knizek & Hjelmeland, 2007). In commenting on this limitation, Rogers (2003) called for greater attention to the development and testing of suicidology theories. Therefore, guided by Joiner’s (2005) interpersonal- psychological theory of suicidal behavior and Markus and Kitaya- ma’s (1991) theory of self-construals, we examined in the present study theoretically grounded risk factors associated with Asian American college students’ suicide ideation. We focused on sui- cide ideation because it has been shown to be one of the most robust predictors of suicide attempts and suicide deaths (Mann, 2002). Moreover, most suicidology scholars acknowledge that the desire to die is necessary for a death to be classified as a suicide (Wasserman & Wasserman, 2009). Y. Joel Wong, Yu-Chen Chiu, and Yvonne, Mok, Counseling and Educational Psychology Department, Indiana University Bloomington; Kelly Koo, Department of Psychology, University of Washington; Kim- berly K. Tran, Department of Psychology, Fayettevile State University. The order of authorship for the fourth and fifth authors was alphabeti- cally determined. Both authors contributed equally to the article. We thank Stephanie Dickson for her advice on conducting a power analysis. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Y. Joel Wong, Indiana University Bloomington, School of Education, 201 North Rose Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: joelwong@indiana.edu Journal of Counseling Psychology © 2011 American Psychological Association 2011, Vol. 58, No. 2, 197–209 0022-0167/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0023040 197