Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:23:30.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Life Stress, Medical Lethality, and Suicidal Intent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

K. G. Power ,
D. J. Cooke  and
D. N. Brooks
K. G. Power*
Affiliation:
Community Clinical Psychology Service, Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA
D. J. Cooke
Affiliation:
Douglas Inch Centre, 2 Woodside Terrace, Glasgow G3 7UY
D. N. Brooks
Affiliation:
Glasgow University Department of Psychological Medicine, 6 Whittinghame Gardens, Glasgow G12 OA A
*
∗Correspondence
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Eighty parasuicide patients were studied. The importance of life stress, age, and General Health Questionnaire score as predictors of the suicidal intent and medical lethality which they exhibited was examined. Medical lethality and suicidal intent were closely related: those whose parasuicide resulted in high lethality differed from those showing low lethality in their degree of suicidal intent, but did not differ in life stress, age, or GHQ score. Although both life stress and GHQ score were significantly correlated with suicidal intent, the GHQ score accounted for a greater proportion of the variance. These results suggest a more complex relationship between life stress, GHQ score, and suicidal intent than is often assumed.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 147 , Issue 6 , December 1985 , pp. 655 - 659
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beck, A. T., Beck, R. & Kovacs, M. (1975) Classification of suicidal behaviours: 1. Quantifying intent and medical lethality. American Journal of Psychiatry, 132, 285–287.Google Scholar
Beck, A. T., Herman, I. & Schuyler, D. (1974) Development of suicidal intent scales. In The Prediction of Suicide (eds. Beck, A. T., Resnik, H. L. P. & Lettieri, D.). Bowie, Maryland: Charles Press.Google Scholar
Birtchnell, J. & Alarcon, J. (1971) Depression and attempted suicide. British Journal of Psychiatry, 118, 289–296.Google Scholar
Card, J. J. (1974) Lethality of suicidal methods and suicide risk: Two distinct concepts. Omega, 5, 37–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochrane, R., & Robertson, A. (1975) Stress in the lives of parasuicides. Social Psychiatry, 10, 161–171.Google Scholar
Cooke, D. J. (1980) Some conceptual and methodological considerations of the problems inherent in the specification of the simple event syndrome link. In Stress and Anxiety, Vol 7 (eds. Sarason, I. G. and Speilberger, C. D.). New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Cooke, D. J. (1981) Life events and syndromes of depression in the general population. Social Psychiatry, 16, 181–186.Google Scholar
Dartington, R. B. (1968) Multiple regression in psychological research and practice. Psychological Bulletin, 69, 161–182.Google Scholar
Dyer, J. A. T., & Kreitman, N. (1984) Hopelessness, depression and suicidal intent in parasuicide. British Journal of Psychiatry, 144, 127–133.Google Scholar
Faberow, N. L. (1950) Personality patterns of suicidal mental hospital patients. General Psychology Monographs, 42, 3–79.Google Scholar
Fraser, D. M. & Lawson, A. A. M. (1975) Acute poisoning in young women, 1965–73. Health Bulletin, 33, 97–101.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. (1972) The Detection of Psychiatric Illness by Questionnaire. (Maudsley Monograph No. 21). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldney, R. D. (1981) Attempted suicide in young women: correlates of lethality. British Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 382–390.Google Scholar
Johnstone, D. W. & Goldberg, D. (1976) Psychiatric screening in general practice. Lancet, i, 605–608.Google Scholar
Kreitman, N. & Schreiber, M. (1980) Parasuicide in young Edinburgh women: 1968–75. In The Suicide Syndrome (eds. Farmer, R. D. T. and Hirsch, S. R.). London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Kreitman, N., Smith, P. & Tan, Eng-Seong (1970) Attempted suicide as language: an empirical study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 116, 465–473.Google Scholar
Luscomb, R. L., Clum, G. A., & Patsiokas, A. T. (1980) Mediating factors in the relationship between life stress and suicide attempting. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 168, 644–650.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mchugh, P. R. & Goodell, H. (1971) Suicidal behaviours: A distinction in patients with sedative poisoning seen in a general hospital. Archives of General Psychiatry, 25, 456–464.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Minkoff, K., Bergman, E., Beck, A. T. & Beck, R. (1973) Hopelessness and attempted suicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 455–459.Google Scholar
Morgan, H. G. (1979) Death Wishes? The Understanding and Management of Deliberate Self-harm. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
O'Brien, S. E. M. & Farmer, R. D. T. (1980) The role of life events in the aetiology of self-poisoning. In The Suicide Syndrome (eds. Farmer, R. D. T. and Hirsch, S. R.). London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Pallis, D. J. & Barraclough, B. M. (1977) Seriousness of suicide attempt and future risk of suicide: A comment on Card's paper. Omega, 8, 141–149.Google Scholar
Pallis, & Sainsbury, P. (1976) The value of assessing intent in attempted suicide. Psychological Medicine, 6, 487–492.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E. S., Mcguiness, B. & Gomez, J. (1976) An Anglo-American comparison of the scaling of life events. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 49, 237–247.Google Scholar
Paykel, , Prusoff, B. A. & Myers, J. K. (1975) Suicide attempts and recent life events. Archives of General Psychiatry, 32, 327–333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pierce, D. W. (1977) Suicidal intent in self-injury. British Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 377–385.Google Scholar
Pierce (1981) The predictive validation of a suicidal intent scale; a five-year follow-up. British Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 391–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, D. H. (1970) The serious suicide attempt: Epidemiological and follow-up study of 886 patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 127, 764–770.Google Scholar
Sendbuehler, J. M., Bland, A. & Nemeth, G. (1970) Attempted suicides. Diseases of the Nervous System, 31, 59–68.Google Scholar
Stengel, E., Cook, N. & Kreeger, I. S. (1958) Attempted Suicide: Its Social Significance and Effects (Maudsley Monograph No. 4). London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Worden, J. W. (1976) Lethality factors and the suicide attempt. In Suicidology: Contemporary Developments (eds. Schreidman, E. S. and Greenblatt, M.). New York: Grune & Stratton.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.