Subject(s)
Licensure, Medical/legislation & jurisprudence , Personality Disorders/diagnosis , Physician Impairment/legislation & jurisprudence , Psychiatry/standards , Sex Offenses/legislation & jurisprudence , Female , Humans , MMPI/statistics & numerical data , Male , Personality Disorders/psychology , Physician-Patient Relations , Psychiatry/legislation & jurisprudence , Psychometrics , Reproducibility of Results , Sex Offenses/psychologyABSTRACT
The MMPI profiles of forty suicidal and forty non-suicidal male and female depressed patients, matched for age, were compared. Significant differences between MMPI scale T scores which showed some sex specificity were found between the suicidal and non-suicidal depressives. These results replicate previous findings. However neither individual scale T scores, derived discriminant functions, nor actuarial or cluster analysis-derived MMPI profiles could completely discriminate between suicidal and non-suicidal depressed inpatients of either sex. The relevance and implications of these findings to the ascertainment of suicidal risk are discussed.
Subject(s)
Depressive Disorder/psychology , MMPI , Suicide/psychology , Adult , Diagnosis, Differential , Female , Hospitals, Psychiatric , Humans , Male , PsychometricsSubject(s)
MMPI , Suicide, Attempted/psychology , Adult , Depression/psychology , Female , Gender Identity , Humans , Impulsive Behavior/psychology , Male , Middle Aged , Psychosexual DevelopmentSubject(s)
Aged , Suicide/epidemiology , Canada , Female , Humans , Male , Suicide, Attempted , Suicide PreventionABSTRACT
Although the rate for suicide in old age is high, the rate for attempted (unsuccessful) suicide is low. Among the elderly, suicide-attempt groups have more physical disorders, more psychoses, and more psychopathologic findings, and are under-represented demographically. Fifty percent of the elderly suicide attempters have organic brain syndrome (OBS), compared to only 5-10 percent of the "normal" population over age 60. Among what might be expected to be a high-risk suicide population, OBS apparently interferes with the success of suicide attempts by impairing coordination, planning, determination, and awareness of reality.
