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Background: It is important to know predictors of long-term course over time of suicidal thoughts and ideation in depressed older persons., Methods: In this study, 378 depressed older persons were interviewed at baseline, and after 2 and 6 years to evaluate the presence of depressive disorder. The Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS) was administered every 6 months for 6 years. Latent Class Growth Analysis was performed on the IDS item on suicidal ideation to identify subgroups with different trajectories., Results: Five subgroups with suicidal ideation trajectories were identified: 1) severe, transient (10.9 %), 2) severe, persisting (8.0 %), 3) mild, but increasing (14.9 %), 4) moderate, persisting (35.6 %), and 5) no thoughts (30.6 %). Mixed model analysis showed that trajectories were related to 6-year course of depressive symptoms. Yet, suicidal ideation or thoughts of loss of meaning of life were still present in 22.7 % and 17.4 % of those who remitted after 2 and 6 years. Independent of baseline depressive symptom severity, loneliness, childhood trauma, history of suicidal ideation or attempt, openness to experience, earlier age of depression onset, anxiety symptom severity and worse mastery predicted worse trajectories., Limitations: 47 % dropped out at 6-years follow-up, we did not distinguish between thoughts of death and suicide, we did not assess death by suicide., Conclusions: Although trajectories of suicidal ideation and thoughts of loss of meaning of life were strongly related to the course of depression severity, they also appear after remission. Clinicians should be vigilant for suicidal ideation or death wish, even after remission of depression., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Background: Although randomized trials show that specific phobia treatments can be effective, it is unclear whether patients experience treatment as helpful in clinical practice. We investigated this issue by assessing perceived treatment helpfulness for specific phobia in a cross-national epidemiological survey., Methods: Cross-sectional population-based WHO World Mental Health (WMH) surveys in 24 countries (n=112,507) assessed lifetime specific phobia. Respondents who met lifetime criteria were asked whether they ever received treatment they considered helpful and the number of professionals seen up to the time of receiving helpful treatment. Discrete-event survival analysis was used to calculate conditional-cumulative probabilities of obtaining helpful treatment across number of professionals seen and of persisting in help-seeking after prior unhelpful treatment., Results: 23.0% of respondents reported receiving helpful treatment from the first professional seen, whereas cumulative probability of receiving helpful treatment was 85.7% after seeing up to 9 professionals. However, only 14.7% of patients persisted in seeing up to 9 professionals, resulting in the proportion of patients ever receiving helpful treatment (47.5%) being much lower than it could have been with persistence in help-seeking. Few predictors were found either of perceived helpfulness or of persistence in help-seeking after earlier unhelpful treatments., Limitations: Retrospective recall and lack of information about either types of treatments received or objective symptomatic improvements limit results., Conclusions: Despite these limitations, results suggest that helpfulness of specific phobia treatment could be increased, perhaps substantially, by increasing patient persistence in help-seeking after earlier unhelpful treatments. Improved understanding is needed of barriers to help-seeking persistence., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)