Citation

Anvar S, Swerdlow BA, Jobes D, Timpano KR, Mandel AA, Kleiman E, Joiner T, Johnson SL. Br. J. Clin. Psychol. 2022; 61(4): 1219-1235.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, British Psychological Society)

DOI

10.1111/bjc.12383

PMID

35912940

PMCID

PMC9560962

Abstract

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.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Cross-Sectional Studies; Adult; Emotions; Self Report; suicidal ideation; acute suicidal affective disturbance; *Suicidal Ideation; *Impulsive Behavior; emotion-related impulsivity; urgency