Abstract
Suicide screening is critical in pediatric emergency departments (EDs). Behavioral measures of suicide risk may complement self-report measures. The current study examines suicide-specific behavioral measures and tests their potential short-term within-person effects among respondents, ability to discriminate future suicide attempt from suicidal ideation, and translation into interpretable categorical composite scores. The sample included 167 youth (10–17 years), presenting for suicide-related reasons to a pediatric psychiatric ED. During their ED visit, participants completed the Death/Life Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Suicide Stroop Task. Recurrent suicidal thoughts and attempts were assessed within 6 months of the ED visit via medical records and email surveys. Youth displayed a decrease in the levels of distress and self-injurious desires (negative mood, desire to hurt themselves, and desire to die) after completing the behavioral tasks. The Death/Life IAT prospectively differentiated with 68% accuracy between youth who attempted suicide after their ED visit and those who had suicidal ideation but no attempt, p = 0.04, OR = 5.65, although this effect became marginally significant after controlling for self-report and demographic covariates. Neither the Suicide Stroop Task, nor the categorical composite scores predicted suicide attempts, ps = 0.08–0.87, ORs = 0.96–3.95. Behavioral measures of suicide risk administered in the ED do not appear to increase distress or self-injurious desires. They may be able to distinguish those who go on to attempt suicide (vs. consider suicide) within six months after discharge.
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Participant consent to data sharing in a public repository or upon request was not obtained for this research, so supporting data are not available.
Notes
Because several demographic and self-report covariates predicted the 6-month outcomes at the level of p < .10, we ran supplemental analyses while including a broader range of covariates (age, gender, sexual orientation, HSC total score, lifetime suicide attempt presence, autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, and patient prediction of a future suicide attempt). The distinction between the suicide attempt group and the suicidal ideation-only group stayed marginally significant, p = .06, aOR = 6.64, 95% CI [0.94, 46.68]. Covariates did not have significant effects, ps = .08-.99. Relative to the univariate model, adding the demographic and self-report measure covariates did not significantly improve prediction accuracy, AUC = .74, 95% CI = [.62, .86].
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This study was supported by the Young Investigator Grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (YIG-2–026-16, PI: Cha).
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Conceptualization: CBC, AB, RSG; Methodology: CBC, AB, RSG, KB, OHP, KT, KS; Formal analysis and investigation: KS, OHP, KB; Writing—original draft preparation: KS, KB; Writing—review and editing: CBC, AB, RSG, OHP, KT, AS; Funding acquisition: CBC; Resources: CBC, AB, RSG; Supervision: AS.
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Shin, K.E., Baroni, A., Gerson, R.S. et al. Using Behavioral Measures to Assess Suicide Risk in the Psychiatric Emergency Department for Youth. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-023-01507-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-023-01507-y