Search

Following a comprehensive review of the research literature on youth suicide, the authors discuss the rates and patterns of completed suicides and suicide attempts. The state of research on potential risk and protective factors is also reviewed, covering personal characteristics, family characteristics, adverse life circumstances, and socioenvironmental and contextual factors. (Contains 2 tables.)

Determining suicide risk is a complex matter. A typology of adolescents' most common explanations for discrepant reporting of suicidal behavior is presented. Answers to interview questions were compared to a self-report measure, and adolescent in-patients (N=48) were asked to clarify discrepancies. Seven mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories were derived. (Author/EMK)

Employing the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI), we examined differences in the maladaptive personality style profiles of clinically referred, depressed adolescents presenting with (n = 26) and without (n = 23) a history of previous suicide attempts. Relative to the comparison group, adolescent attempters experienced more severe overall levels of personality dysfunction. At the trait level, attempters obtained higher scores on the forceful and borderline tendency scales and lower scores on the submissive and conforming scales of the MACI, reflecting negative mood regulation deficits (e.g., anger control problems) and persistently high levels of aggressive impulsivity. These preliminary findings suggest that MACI personality scales may be useful in discriminating adolescents with and without previous suicidal behavior, especially among depressed outpatient samples [C] 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 56: 1381-1385, 2000. Keywords: suicide; depression; adolescent; personality disorder; risk assessment

Severe Impairment Battery (SIB) data from the 24-week, randomized, double-blind ACTivities of daily living and cognitION (ACTION) study suggest that patients with severe Alzheimer’s disease (AD) benefit from treatment with 13.3 versus 4.6 mg/24 h rivastigmine patch. The objective of this retrospective analysis was to further examine the cognitive efficacy of 13.3 versus 4.6 mg/24 h rivastigmine patch on individual SIB items, and SIB domains derived using factor analysis of these items. Change from baseline at Week 24 on 9 new factor-defined domains and individual items was calculated and compared using effect sizes (Cohen’s d). Numerically less decline was observed with 13.3 versus 4.6 mg/24 h patch on all domains and the majority of individual items. Largest least squares mean treatment differences were observed on “visuospatial reasoning,” “object naming,” “recognition,” “design copying,” “social agency,” “ideational praxis,” and “comprehension” domains. These findings suggest 13.3 mg/24 h rivastigmine patch demonstrates broad cognitive efficacy across a range of SIB items and domains in patients with severe AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between transient mood phenomena and enduring personality characteristics was studied. Eighty-one women completed the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985) and provided daily unidimensional mood ratings for 20 days. Average mood was negatively related to Neuroticism (N) and positively related to Extraversion (E). More fine-grained analyses revealed that Positive Emotions, a facet of E, was a better predictor of average mood than was the overall E factor score. The greater a facet's loading on N or E, the better it predicted average mood. Within-day mood variability (mood fluctuation) was positively related to Openness to Experience (O), particularly to the facet, Fantasy. Across-day variability (mood swing) was positively related to both E and O. No relationship was found between any of the mood variables and Agreeableness (A) or Conscientiousness (C). The 3 mood variables were virtually independent of one another, but each showed moderately high temporal stability across the 4-week period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]