Protective effects of reasons for living against suicidal ideation in daily life

Occurrence and characteristics of suicidal ideation in psychiatrically healthy individuals based on ecological momentary assessment

Decedents with no known mental disorder comprise 5-40% of suicides, suggesting that suicide ideation (SI) and behavior may occur in the psychiatrically healthy with important implications for suicide risk screening. Healthy Volunteers (HV) and patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) provided 7 days of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) data about SI and stressors. Longitudinal mixed effects logistic regression models compared HV and patient SI and stressors. Mixed effects linear regression models compared HVs' and patients' SI score change from the previous epoch's SI score when each stressor occurred. HVs (n = 42) reported less frequent (p < 0.001) and less intense SI (p < 0.003) than patients (n = 80), yet did endorse SI and/or SI-related items in 44% of EMA epochs, endorsing SI items in 25% of epochs with non-zero SI scores. For 7 of 8 stressors, patients reported stressors more often than HVs (all p < 0.001) responding to them with increased SI (0.0001 < p < 0.0472). HVs were relatively resilient to stressors, reporting SI increases only in response to neglect (p < 0.0147). Although SI and SAs are documented among psychiatrically healthy individuals, scientific attention to these observations has been scant. Real-time SI measurement showed that HVs' SI was less pronounced than MDD patients', but was endorsed, nonetheless. Patients were more likely to report stressors than HVs, perhaps due to greater sensitivity to the environment, and reported SI in response to stressors, which was less common in HVs. Both MDD patients and HVs most often manifested passive SI (viz, "decreased wish to live"). However, passive SI (viz, "desire for death"), may predict suicide, even absent SI per se (thinking about killing yourself). This study validates the utility of real-time SI assessment, showing that HVs endorse SI items in 11% of epochs, which implies that suicide risk screening focused on those with mental disorders may be too narrow an approach.

Dynamic Associations Among Sleep, Emotion Dysregulation, and Desire to Live in a Perinatal Sample

OBJECTIVE

The present study prospectively examined dynamic associations among sleep, emotion dysregulation, and desire to live during the perinatal transition, as it was theorized that these factors may contribute to the emergence of postpartum suicide risk.

METHOD

Ninety-four women ( Mage = 29.2 years; 23.4% Latina) wore wrist actigraphs and completed twice daily surveys for 7 days during the third trimester of pregnancy, 6 weeks postpartum, and 4 months postpartum. Multilevel, change-as-outcome models were built to examine changes in attractor dynamics among sleep, emotion dysregulation, and desire to live, as well as if sleep-emotion dysregulation dynamics differed based on participants' desires to live.

RESULTS

From pregnancy to 6 weeks postpartum, emotion dysregulation ( B = -0.09, p = .032) and desire to live ( B = -0.16, p < .001) exhibited more stable temporal patterns around higher emotion dysregulation and lower desire to live. Compared to women who reported consistently high desires to live, those who experienced fluctuations in their desires to live exhibited lower, more stable sleep efficiency during pregnancy ( B = -0.90, p < .001). At 4 months postpartum, those with fluctuating desires to live exhibited a coupling dynamic whereby low sleep efficiency predicted increases in emotion dysregulation ( B = -0.16, p = .020).

CONCLUSIONS

This study was the first to examine nonlinear dynamics among risk factors for postpartum suicide, which may be evident as early as pregnancy and 6 weeks postpartum. Sleep health, in particular, warrants further exploration as a key susceptibility factor in the emergence of postpartum suicide risk.

PREREGISTRATION

Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/qxb75/?view_only=799ffe5c048842dfb89d3ddfebaa420d ).

Factors Associated With Reasons for Living Among Suicidal Adolescents

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to identify baseline demographic and clinical factors associated with higher scores on the Reasons for Living Inventory for Adolescents (RFL-A) at baseline and over follow-up.

METHOD

Using data from a pilot clinical trial of a brief intervention for suicidal youth transitioning from inpatient to outpatient, we identified univariate associations of baseline characteristics with RFL-A and used regression to identify the most parsimonious subset of these variables. Finally, we examined to what extent changes in these characteristics over time were related to changes in RFL-A.

RESULTS

Univariate analyses found that better external functional emotion regulation and social support were associated with higher RFL-A scores; more self-reported depression, internal dysfunctional emotion regulation, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and distress tolerance were associated with lower RFL-A scores. Multiple linear regression identified internal dysfunctional emotion regulation and external functional emotion regulation as the most parsimonious set of characteristics associated with RFL-A. Improvement in internal emotion regulation, sleep, and depression were related to improvements in RFL-A over time.

CONCLUSION

Our findings indicate that emotion regulation-specifically maladaptive internal strategies and use of external resources-is strongly associated with RFL-A. Improvements in internal emotion regulation (r = 0.57), sleep (r = -0.45), and depression (r = -0.34) were related to increases in RFL-A.