Attentional Bias Toward Suicide-Related Stimuli Predicts Suicidal Behavior

The authors proposed that people considering suicide would possess an objectively measurable attentional bias toward suicide-related stimuli & that this bias would predict future suicidal behaviour. Participants were 124 adults presenting to a psychiatric emergency department who were administered a modified emotional Stroop task & followed for 6 months. Suicide attempters showed an attentional bias toward suicide-related words relative to neutral words, & this bias was strongest among those who had made a more recent attempt. This suicide-specific attentional bias predicted which people made a suicide attempt in the next 6 months, above & beyond other clinical predictors. (32 refs.) JA