[新知] 兩個有潛力預測自殺的方法

[mulkcs (mulkcs)]

Psychologists Develop Two Potent New Predictors of Suicide Risk

ScienceDaily (July 30, 2010) — Two powerful new tests developed by
psychologists at Harvard University show great promise in predicting
patients' risk of attempting suicide.

The work may help clinicians overcome their reliance on self-reporting by
at-risk individuals, information that often proves misleading when suicidal
patients wish to hide their intentions. Both new tests are easily
administered within minutes on a computer, giving quick insight into how
patients are thinking about suicide, as well as their propensity to attempt
suicide in the near future.

"Experts have long sought a clear behavioral marker of suicide risk," says
Harvard Professor of Psychology Matthew K. Nock, an author of two papers
describing the new assessments of suicidal behavior. "The current approach,
based on self-reporting, leads to predictions that are scarcely better than
chance, since suicidal patients are often motivated to conceal or
misrepresent their mental state. We sought to develop more sophisticated,
objective measures of how psychiatric patients are thinking about suicide.
Our work provides two important new tools clinicians can use in deciding how
to treat potentially suicidal patients."

Nock and colleagues report on the tests in two papers, one in the current
Journal of Abnormal Psychology and a second published in Psychological
Science. Unlike many previous efforts focused on biological markers of
suicidal behavior, their work identifies two behavioral markers: subjects'
attention to suicide-related stimuli, and the extent to which they associate
death or suicide with themselves.

In one study by Nock's group, 124 patients in a psychiatric emergency
department were administered a modified Stroop test measuring speed in
articulating the color of words on a computer screen. Suicidal individuals
were found to pay more attention to suicide-related words than to neutral
words.

"Suicide Stroop scores predicted six-month follow-up suicide attempts above
and beyond well-known risk factors such as a history of suicide attempts,
patients' reported likelihood of attempt, and clinicians' predictions
regarding patients' likelihood of attempt," says co-author Christine B. Cha,
a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard.

A second study adapted the Implicit Association Test developed by Harvard
psychologist Mahzarin R. Banaji, using reaction times to semantic stimuli to
measure 157 subjects' automatic mental associations -- in this case, the
strength of associations between words related to "self" and words related to
either "life" or "death/suicide." Participants were shown pairs of words on a
screen, with response speed revealing unconscious associations between the
terms. For instance, a rapid response to stimuli associating self with
death/suicide suggests a strong unconscious association between the two.

Nock and his colleagues found that those participants with strong
associations between self and death/suicide were six times more likely to
attempt suicide within the next six months than those holding stronger
associations between self and life.

"These findings suggest that a person's implicit cognition may guide which
behavior he or she chooses to cope with extreme distress," Nock says. "More
specifically, an implicit association with death/suicide may represent one of
the final steps in the pathway to suicide."

Nock and Cha were joined on the two recent papers by co-authors Jennifer M.
Park and Christine T. Finn of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts
General Hospital and Sadia Najmi, Tara L. Deliberto, Halina J. Dour, and
Mahzarin R. Banaji of Harvard's Department of Psychology. The work was funded
by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Norlien Foundation.

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原始網址：
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728111717.htm

這是一篇有趣的文章
前幾天看到了，可是沒讀完就沒轉上來。

這個哈佛的研究團隊企圖找尋可以預測自殺的方法。
根據內文現在好得自殺風險是病人的自我報告、病人過去的自殺次數、醫師判斷。
但本篇提出了另外兩種量測風險的方法，
這兩種方法不是找尋生物標記(biomarker)，
而是利用attention來做行為測試。

一個是stroop test，另一個是"字的聯想強度"利用反應時間來測。
第一個研究發現，自殺者在suicide stroop test中對自殺相關字眼會比較注意。
第二個研究發現，若將"self"與"suicide/death"等字有較強的連結的人，六個月內的自殺
企圖會有將近六倍。

兩篇論文：
Attentional bias toward suicide-related stimuli predicts suicidal behavior.
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/119/3/616/

Measuring the Suicidal Mind Implicit Cognition Predicts Suicidal Behavior
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/03/09/0956797610364762.abstract

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※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) 
◆ From: 140.112.33.135
推 tomoe07:第二個是用IAT（Implicit Association Test）做的，我一直
→ tomoe07:滿好奇IAT除了研究之外，有沒有可能真的作為一種衡鑑工具
→ tomoe07:畢竟它假設的內隱態度╱認知，真能測量是滿誘人的…
推 mark89:stroop test怎麼做跟自殺有關的字眼 @@?
→ mulkcs:看起來是字有不同顏色 要認顏色 有些人會被字的內容干擾
→ mulkcs:我猜是這樣
→ shoxx:對有自殺意涵或是隱喻的字注意力提高? 讓認顏色活動變慢？
推 hikaru924:我們會自動被賦有情緒意涵的字詞所吸引 自殺傾向高的對
推 hikaru924:於與自殺有關的字詞更被吸引或是更難拔除注意力
→ hikaru924:(disengage) 以致於對於字詞顏色的判斷受到干擾(這才是
→ hikaru924:作業內容) 這可泛稱為attentional bias
推 tomoe07:順帶請教樓上，所以內文指得presented with suicidal word
→ tomoe07:是指在做STROOP時快速閃過自殺相關的字詞嗎？然後算各RT？
推 hikaru924:自殘 跳樓 類似這些字詞 不過要判斷的是這些字詞的顏色
→ hikaru924:例如:這些字詞是由紅色藍色等不同墨水所寫的... :)
推 tomoe07:原來如此！感謝樓上解答