Citation

Jollant F, Castelnau D, Malafosse A, Courtet P. Psychiatr. Danub. 2006; 18(Suppl 1): 135-136.

Affiliation

CHU Montpellier and INSERM 361, 371 avenue Doyen Giraud, 34295 Montpellier cedex 05, France. f-jollant@chu-montpellier.fr.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Facultas Universitatis Studiorum Zagrabiensis - Danube Symposion of Psychiatry)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16964116

Abstract

Objective: We previously reported decision-making to be impaired in suicide attempters. In an attempt to understand the underlying processes, we investigated whether explicit understanding of the advantageous strategy was associated with better decision-making performances in healthy subjects and in suicide attempters. Method: The Iowa Gambling Task was used to assess decision-making in 97 healthy subjects, 56 non currently depressed patients with a personal history of affective disorder but no history of suicide attempt (affective patients) and 153 non currently depressed patients with both a history of affective disorder and suicidal behavior (suicide attempters). At the end of the examination, we assessed if participants explicitly understood the advantageous strategy. Results: Explicit understanding was associated with significantly better performances in healthy subjects and affective patients but not in suicide attempters. Moreover, 39.4% of healthy subjects with no knowledge exhibited good performance and 35.9% of those with knowledge had poor performance. Distribution in suicide attempters was respectively 15.7 and 71.9%. Conclusion: Though explicit knowledge may not be necessary for advantageous decision-making, it improves performance in a majority of healthy subjects. In suicide attempters, the adequate use of an explicit strategy may be altered. It is hypothesized that underlying implicit factors which may be necessary for advantageous decision-making are largely impaired in suicide attempters.

Language: en