Six years ago, consumed with grief after my mum died, I started hearing voices and hallucinating that I was talking to her. I started taking more risks with my safety, mixing up handfuls of powerful ...painkillers and taking them at random, not caring if I lived or not.
Abstract Background An important gender difference has been reported regarding suicidal behavior with an overrepresentation of females in nonfatal suicidal behavior and a preponderance of males in ...completed suicide, also known as the ‘gender paradox of suicidal behavior’. The concept of a ‘suicidal process’ classifies suicidal behavior chronologically; this process starts with suicidal ideation and then implies a progression of suicidality ranging from suicidal ideation over plans to suicide attempts and finally fatal suicide. Aims/methods The current paper aims to deepen the knowledge on the gender paradox by collecting and discussing the recent literature on this topic: the most relevant, impacting gender-related factors will be discussed within the suicidal process concept. Results Several factors had a gender-dependent impact on suicidal behavior: psychosocial life stressors such as stressful life events but also sociodemographical or socio-economical factors, and sexual abuse. The gender differences in psychiatric (co)morbidity and in response to or attitude towards antidepressant treatment also appear to have an impact. Furthermore, not only suicide methods but also the gender-dependent variation in reporting suicide has an influence. Finally, the gender differences in help seeking behavior as well as region-dependent cultural beliefs and societal attitudes are discussed. Conclusions Especially life-events seem to exert an important influence at the beginning of a suicidal process, whereas the other factors occur at a further stage in the process, however without a fixed chronology. Also, the duration of the suicidal process is much shorter in male than in females. Finally, some implications with regard to clinical practice and suicide prevention are suggested.
Psychological distress and suicidal behavior are important mental health problems among university students and warrant research to inform strategies for effective prevention in this young ...population. The present study aimed to assess psychological distress and suicidal behavior and to unravel their associations among university students.
A total of 5972 undergraduate students, randomly selected from six universities in central China, comprised the sample. The Chinese version of the Symptom Checklist-90-revised (SCL-90-R) was used to assess various psychological symptoms. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between psychological distress and risk for suicidal behavior.
40.7% of the university students reported positive in a least one of the 9 psychological symptom dimensions assessed by the SCL-90-R. 7.6% of the students reported suicidal behavior in the previous twelve months. The risk of suicidal behavior was significantly associated with psychological symptoms of all types, but there were notable differences by sex. For male students, depression and phobic anxiety increased the risk of suicidal behavior. Meanwhile, depression and obsessive-compulsiveness were positively associated with suicidal behavior in female students. Furthermore, increasing risk of suicidal behavior was associated with increasing positive symptom total (PST) score and a statistically significant trend was observed.
Data collected from a cross-sectional survey does not allow any examination of causal inference.
Psychological distress and suicidal behavior were both common among university students; and psychological distress was highly associated with suicidal behavior. The findings underscore the importance of mental health care for university students.
•A large sample of 5972 undergraduates randomly selected from six universities.•40.7% of the students is positive for a least one symptom of psychological distress.•7.6% of them reported suicidal behavior within the past one year period.•Suicidal behavior is highly associated with depression and phobic anxiety in males, and depression and obsessive-compulsiveness in females.•The risk increases progressively with the score of positive psychological symptom total.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death worldwide for adolescents. Despite decades of research on correlates and risk factors for adolescent suicide, we know little about why suicidal ideation ...and behavior frequently emerge in adolescence and how to predict, and ultimately prevent, suicidal behavior among youths. In this review, we first discuss knowledge regarding correlates, risk factors, and theories of suicide. We then review why adolescence is a period of unique vulnerability, given changing biology and social network reorganization. Next, we present a conceptual model through which to interpret emerging findings in adolescent suicide research. We suggest that a promising area for future research is to examine adolescent suicide as a failure of biological responses to acute stress in the proximal moments of a suicidal crisis. After reviewing initial evidence for this conceptualization, we review future directions for studies on adolescent suicide.
We examined the utility of the Affective States Questionnaire (ASQ) in predicting acute risk for suicidal behavior. Subjects at a VHA Medical Center were interviewed using the ASQ and again 3 months ...later when their suicidal behaviors over that period were examined. The ASQ had a sensitivity of 60% for predicting suicidal behavior over the follow-up period, and specificity of 74%. The false positive rate was relatively low for a sample not highly selected for suicide risk and utilizing a short period of 3 months for suicidal behavior. Subgroups combining the ASQ with disability level or a diagnosis of substance abuse greatly reduced the percentage of false positives. The ASQ is able to improve significantly our ability to predict acute risk of suicidal behavior in clinical psychiatric populations.
Comments on the article by J. J. Chung et al. (see record 2023-87300-001), a systematic review aimed to synthesize the evidence of cognitive flexibility, a set of cognitive processes, and suicidal ...and nonsuicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB). In this commentary, we will mainly focus on the relationship of cognitive flexibility with suicidal ideation (SI) and behavior. An important finding that the authors emphasize is a differentiation between state and trait assessments of cognitive reappraisal in their relationships with SI. Namely, a greater tendency to use cognitive reappraisal to cope with negative thoughts in the moment (i.e., state cognitive reappraisal) relates to lower severity of concurrent SI, and reappraisal of a specific, recent stressful event relate to lower severity of SI. On the other hand, state reappraisal does not appear to relate to a more general tendency toward SI. In light of these findings, cognitive reappraisal may only have a meaningful relationship with SI when both are assessed in the short term. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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Comments on the article by J. J. Chung et al. (see record 2023-87300-001), a systematic review of the role of cognitive flexibility in self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs). Chung and ...colleagues conclude by providing an excellent set of recommendations to guide future research on cognitive flexibility and SITBs. These recommendations call for specificity in deciding which facets of cognitive flexibility to measure; selection of clinically meaningful “targets” of cognitive flexibility; and consideration of which measurement tools are most appropriate to capture these facets. Context and the state-dependent nature of both cognitive flexibility and SITBs must also be considered. As they explicitly state, these recommendations are largely methodological, and in many ways offer a prescription for clinical psychological science research more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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