Psychologists develop 2 potent new predictors of suicide risk

Science Centric:

Two powerful new tests developed by psychologists at Harvard University show great promise in predicting patients’ risk of attempting suicide.

The work may help clinicians overcome their reliance on self-reporting by at-risk individuals, information that often proves misleading when suicidal patients wish to hide their intentions. Both new tests are easily administered within minutes on a computer, giving quick insight into how patients are thinking about suicide, as well as their propensity to attempt suicide in the near future.

‘Experts have long sought a clear behavioural marker of suicide risk,’ says Harvard Professor of Psychology Matthew K. Nock, an author of two papers describing the new assessments of suicidal behaviour. ‘The current approach, based on self-reporting, leads to predictions that are scarcely better than chance, since suicidal patients are often motivated to conceal or misrepresent their mental state. We sought to develop more sophisticated, objective measures of how psychiatric patients are thinking about suicide. Our work provides two important new tools clinicians can use in deciding how to treat potentially suicidal patients.’

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