Personality Characteristics of Attempted Suicides

Abstract

A battery of five tests consisting of the Mill Hill Vocabulary, the Hysteroid-Obsessoid Questionnaire, the Hostility scales, a level of aspiration-tapping test, and the Symptom Sign Inventory was administered to a group of 50 female attempted suicides, 50 psychiatric controls and 50 normal controls coming from a general hospital, matched individually on variables such as age, education, occupation and marital status in order to study the personality characteristics of attempted suicides that differentiated them from other psychiatric patients and normals who have not made any such attempts at suicide. The results indicated that attempted suicides had more general hostility and were more rigid than were the psychiatric controls.