How powerful is a family?

Abstract

If you've listened to the news recently, you may have been struck by a sense of impending doom. This is perhaps especially true for adolescents, who have faced a global pandemic and the constant threat of school shootings and gun violence. Persistent feelings of hopelessness are experienced at alarming rates by adolescents. Hopelessness (defined as the negative expectation toward oneself or the future) has been widely reported to play a major role in the development of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and unsafe behaviors (Berardelli et al., 2022; Stoddard et al., 2011).