Development and preliminary validation of a scale of psychache

This article details the construction and psychometric evaluation of a scale of psychache. Two studies were conducted to describe the Psychache Scale's development and construct validity with 505 university undergraduate participants. Analyses indicated that the scale of psychache had strong internal consistency reliability, criterion validity for indicating various suicide criteria, and incremental validity, relative to other established psychological antecedents of suicide measures, for statistically predicting status on these suicide criteria. Findings support both the construct validity of the Psychache Scale and Shneidman's theory that emphasizes the pre-eminence of psychache as a cause of suicide.