Year: 2013 Source: Journal of Psychiatric Research.(2012).46(10): 1272Ð1277.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2012.06.013 SIEC No: 20130034

Objectives A major interest in the assessment of suicide risk is to develop an accurate instrument, which could be easily adopted by clinicians. This article aims at identifying the most discriminative items from a collection of scales usually employed in the assessment of suicidal behavior. Methods The answers to the Barrat Impulsiveness Scale, International Personality Disorder Evaluation Screening Questionnaire, BrownÐGoodwin Lifetime History of Aggression, and Holmes & Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale provided by a group of 687 subjects (249 suicide attempters, 81 non-suicidal psychiatric inpatients, and 357 healthy controls) were used by the Lars-en algorithm to select the most discriminative items. Results We achieved an average accuracy of 86.4%, a specificity of 89.6%, and a sensitivity of 80.8% in classifying suicide attempters using 27 out of the 154 items from the original scales. Conclusions The 27 items reported here should be considered a preliminary step in the development of a new scale evaluating suicidal risk in settings where time is scarce.

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