Abstract
Emotion‐related impulsivity and suicidal ideation: Towards a more specific model
Anvar, S., Swerdlow, B.A., Jobes, D., Timpano, K.R., Mandel, A.A., Kleiman, E., ... & Johnson, S.L.
Objectives: Suicidal ideation is a pervasive and painful experience that varies considerably in its phenomenology. Here, we consider how one key risk variable might inform our understanding of variation in suicidal ideation: emotion-related impulsivity, the trait-like tendency towards unconstrained speech, behaviour, and cognition in the face of intense emotions. We hypothesized that emotion-related impulsivity would be tied to specific features, including severity, perceived lack of controllability, more rapidly fluctuating course, higher scores on a measure of acute suicidal affective disturbance, and more emotional and cognitive disturbance as antecedents.
Methods: We recruited two samples of adults (Ns = 421, 221) through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), with oversampling of those with suicidal ideation. Both samples completed psychometrically sound self-report measures online to assess emotion- and non-emotion-related dimensions of impulsivity and characteristics of suicidal ideation.
Results: One form of emotion-related impulsivity related to the severity, uncontrollability, dynamic course, and affective and cognitive precursors of ideation.
Conclusions: Despite limitations of the cross-sectional design and self-report measures, the current findings highlight the importance of specificity in considering key dimensions of impulsivity and suicidal ideation.