A Potential Suicide Personality Inventory

Abstract

A study of the “suicide” literature was conducted by means of the critical incident technique. All incidents thought to be characteristic of suicidal individuals were collected from 66 “suicide” research studies. From this collection 50 incidents were chosen for inclusion in a 55-item Potential Suicide Personality Inventory. Five items were used as fillers. The PSPI was administered to one group of non-suicidal and one group of suicidal male Caucasian VA NP hospital patients. The suicide group was further subdivided into a threatened suicide group, an attempted suicide group, and one which both threatened and attempted. The results showed that the combined as well as the three subdivided suicide groups could be differentiated from the non-suicide group by χ² at the .05 level of significance and the .01 and .001 as well. None of the suicidal groups could be differentiated from one another. The need for cross-validation was stressed. It was emphasized that the differentiation is on a group level and not on an individual basis.