Social cognition and short-term prediction of suicidal ideation in schizophrenia.

Despite recent research acknowledging social cognition as an important feature of interpersonal functioning in schizophrenia, little work has evaluated the role of social cognition in suicidal ideation and behavior in psychosis. In a short-term longitudinal study, we evaluated the association between concurrent and near term suicidal ideation with social cognition, including emotion recognition and related biases (ER-40; BLERT), attribution biases (AIHQ), and evaluations of trustworthiness (trustworthiness task) in a sample of 179 outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Adjusting for severity of positive and general mental health symptoms, greater reactivity to extreme stimuli (trustworthiness measure), BLERT negative affect accuracy, and AIHQ Blame Scores were associated with suicidal ideation at baseline. AIHQ Blame Scores also longitudinally predicted the presence of ideation 2 weeks later and were highest among participants with ideation across the two time points. The present findings provide support that biased interpretations, and, concurrently with ideation, reactivity and selective accuracy to negative stimuli, are associated with suicidal ideation in schizophrenia. Further understanding the role of social cognitive ability and biases on suicidal ideation could contribute to the understanding of social cognition as a treatment target in prevention of suicidal behavior in schizophrenia.

Successful Treatment of Suicidal Risk.

BACKGROUND: In this article we focused on analyzing surveyed patient-generated responses based on two outcome questions derived from a suicide-specific framework called the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS): Q1 - "Were there any aspects of your treatment that were particularly helpful to you? If so, please describe these. Be as specific as possible." Q2 - "What have you learned from your clinical care that could help you if you became suicidal in the future?" AIMS: To develop a reliable coding system based on formerly suicidal patients' responses to two open-ended prompts and examine most frequently identified themes. METHOD: The present study utilized a consensual qualitative research process to examine responses of clinically resolved suicidal patients, based on the CAMS resolution criteria (i.e., three consecutive CAMS sessions reporting the effective management of suicidal risk), to two Suicide Status Form (SSF) outcome questions (n = 49 for Q1, and n = 52 for Q2). RESULTS: Reliable coding systems were developed and used to determine major themes of successful patient responses. CONCLUSION: The results of this study provide insight into patients' experiences of a successful treatment for suicidal risk with larger implications for suicide-specific treatments in general.