Help‐Seeking Behavior Prior to Nearly Lethal Suicide Attempts

T he association between help‐seeking and nearly lethal suicide attempts was evaluated using data from a population‐based, case‐control study of 153 13‐ to 34‐year‐old suicide attempt case‐patients treated at emergency departments in Houston, Texas, and a random sample of 513 control‐subjects. Measures of help‐seeking included whether the participant sought help for health/emotional problems in the past month, type of consultant contacted, and whether suicide was discussed during the interaction. Overall, friends/family were consulted most frequently (48%). After controlling for potential confounders, case‐patients were less likely than control‐subjects to seek help from any consultant (OR = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.3–0.8) or a professional (e.g., physician, counselor) consultant (OR = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.29–0.8). Among those who sought help, case‐patients were more likely than to discuss suicide (OR = 2.6, 95% CI = 1.2–5.4), particularly with professionals (OR = 11.8, 95% CI = 3.2–43.2). Our findings suggest that efforts to better understand the role of help‐seeking in suicide prevention, including help sought from family and friends, deserves further attention.     

Medical Conditions and Nearly Lethal Suicide Attempts

P hysical illness has been studied as a risk factor for suicidal behavior, but little is known about this relationship among younger persons. We conducted a population‐based, case‐control study in Houston, Texas, from November 1992 through September 1995. The final sample consisted of 153 case‐ and 513 control‐subjects aged 13 to 34 years. Case patients were identified at hospital emergency departments and met criteria for a nearly lethal suicide attempt. Control subjects were recruited via a random‐digit‐dial telephone survey. Case patients were more likely than controls to report having any serious medical conditions (crude OR = 3.23; 95% CI = 2.12–4.91). After controlling for age, race/ethnicity, alcoholism, depression, and hopelessness, the adjusted odds ratio for men was 4.76 (95% CI = 1.87–12.17), whereas the adjusted odds ratio for women was 1.60 (95% CI‐0.62–4.17), suggesting that young men with medical conditions are at increased risk for nearly lethal suicide attempts. Increased efforts to identify and appropriately refer these patients are needed.     

Intention matters to make you (im)moral: Positive-negative asymmetry in moral character evaluations

ABSTRACT

Is intention, even if unfulfilled, enough to make a person appear to be good or bad? In this study, we investigated the influence of unfulfilled intentions of an agent on subsequent moral character evaluations. We found a positive-negative asymmetry in the effect of intentions. Factual information concerning failure to fulfill a positive intention mitigated the morality judgment of the actor, yet this mitigation was not as evident for the negative vignettes. Participants rated an actor who failed to fulfill their negative intention as highly immoral, as long as there was an external explanation to its unfulfillment. Furthermore, both emotional and cognitive (i.e., informativeness) processes mediated the effect of negative intention on moral character. For the positive intention, there was a significant mediation by emotions, yet not by informativeness. Results evidence the relevance of mental states in moral character evaluations and offer affective and cognitive explanations to the asymmetry.     

The Stiles summation index applied to heterochromatic brightness matching

The summation index technique introduced by Stiles has been applied to heterochromatic brightness matching in order to explain individual differences in luminous efficiency functions for brightness. Such functions were obtained for 2-deg and 10-deg fields from twelve subjects, and the difference between the two fields was compared with the macular pigment density tabulated in Wyszecki and Stiles's book. A summation index was obtained for red and green stimuli combinations and the results are expressed in the form of an equation with nonlinear coefficients. The same equation is applied to the brightness luminous efficiency functions and the individual differences in the efficiency function are interpreted as the result of different contributions of opponent chromatic channels to the perception of brightness.