Correlation between theory of mind and attempted suicide in adolescents with depressive disorder / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the difference of theory of mind between adolescent depressive disorder patients with and without suicide attempt and its correlation with depression severity.Methods:From September 2019 to April 2021, totally 56 cases of attempted suicide adolescent depression patients(suicide attempted group), and 78 non-attempted suicide adolescent depression patients (non-suicide attempted group) and 23 healthy controls (healthy control group) with matched sex, age and years of education were included.The 17-item Hamilton depression scale(HAMD-17) and mini-international neuropsychiatric interview (M. I. N. I. ) were evaluated in all the subjects for depression severity and suicide trait related clinical psychological scale, theory of mind-picture sequencing task (ToM-PST) includes primary belief, primary false belief, secondary belief, secondary false belief, third-level false belief, sense of reality, reciprocity, deception and deception detection, which were used to test the theory of mind of the three groups. SPSS 25.0 software was used to statistically analyze the data, compare the differences of ToM of the three groups, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation between ToM of the attempted suicide group and the clinical behavior scale.Results:The suicide attempted group was significantly lower in understanding primary false belief ((2.46±0.63) vs (2.87±0.46)) than the healthy control group( P<0.05), and the understanding of deception((2.84±0.42) vs (2.63±0.61)) was significantly higher than the non-suicide attempted group( P<0.05), and the non-suicide attempted group was significantly lower in understanding primary false belief((2.48±0.72) vs ( 2.87±0.46)) and ToM total scores((50.86±6.60) vs (54.91±5.12)) than the healthy control group(both P<0.05). Pearson correlation analysis showed that the secondary false belief of the attempted suicide group were negatively correlated with the cognitive impairment( r=-0.267, P<0.05), and third-level false belief was negatively correlated with the cognitive impairment, retardation, and depressiontotal score( r=-0.331, r=-0.319, r=-0.269, all P<0.05). There was no significant correlation between primary belief, primary false belief, secondary belief, sense of reality, reciprocity, deception, deception detection, total score of picture ranking, total score of ToM and depression in suicide attempt group(all P>0.05). Conclusion:The ability to understand deception is different between depression adolescents with and without suicide attempt, and it is not correlated with the severity of depression.