Differentiating Adolescent Suicide Attempters from Ideators: Examining the Interaction between Depression Severity and Alcohol Use

Depressed mood, frequency of alcohol use, and their combination were examined to see if they differentiated nonsuicidal adolescents from those with suicidal ideation and adolescents with suicidal ideation from those who have made a suicide attempt. Hierarchical logistic regressions indicated that frequency of alcohol use did not differentiate nonsuicidal adolescents from those with current suicidal ideation, but severity of depressed mood did so. In contrast, alcohol use was a significant differentiating factor between adolescents who had attempted suicide compared to those with suicidal ideation only, with severity of depressed mood not being significant. However, there was also a significant interaction effect such that for adolescents with suicidal ideation and low levels of depression, increased frequency of alcohol use was associated with increased odds of a suicide attempt. These findings suggest that alcohol use may hasten the transition from suicidal ideation to suicide attempt in adolescents with low levels of depressed mood.     

Sensitivity and response bias in fear of spiders

According to cognitive theories of anxiety, phobic patients are searching the environment for threatening stimuli, and detecting them rapidly. However, previous studies failed to find a lowered perceptual threshold for threatening stimuli in specific phobias. Therefore, two experiments applying a signal detection paradigm were conducted. Highly spider fearful and nonfearful participants were asked to decide whether a picture of a spider, beetle, or butterfly was presented. In both experiments, spider fearfuls were not better at detecting spiders, or any other animal, than healthy controls. Instead, spider fearfuls were more liberal in assuming that they had seen a spider or a beetle. In accord with earlier studies, these results suggest that spider phobics may exhibit an interpretation bias rather than improved detection of threat.