Personality disorder and suicide intent

Abstract

Studies of suicide intent have found a link between seriousness of the attempt and personality. Following a parasuicide, 60 patients were assessed using measures of depression, suicide intent and personality. Personality disorder was found to be present in over 65% of these and was mainly of explosive type. It was significantly more common in men that women and the dimension measuring sociopathy was equivocally linked to male gender. There were no other associations between gender and the other dimensions measured. Using a categorical apporach to personality, suicide intent was not significantly different between the categories of personality; there was no correlation between dimensional or categorical measures of personality and suicide intent, when the severity of depression was controlled. By itself personality but not contribute significantly in determining variance in intent but it did interact significantly with age.