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. 2013 Jul;55(3):283-6.
doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.117150.

A psychometric cut-point to separate emergently suicidal depressed patients from stable depressed outpatients

W Vaughn McCall  1 , Nicolas Batson, Megan Webster, Indu Joshi, Todd Derreberry, Adam McDonough, Suzan Farris
Affiliations

A psychometric cut-point to separate emergently suicidal depressed patients from stable depressed outpatients

W Vaughn McCall et al. Indian J Psychiatry. 2013 Jul.

Abstract

Context: The design of safe clinical trials targeting suicidal ideation requires operational definitions of what degree of suicidal ideation is too excessive to allow safe participation.

Aims: We examined the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI) to develop a psychometric cut-point that would identify patients having a suicidal emergency.

Settings and design: The Emergency Department (ED) and the out-patient clinic of a university hospital.

Materials and methods: We used the SSI to contrast 23 stable, depressed adult out-patients versus 11 depressed adult ED patients awaiting psychiatric admission for a suicidal emergency.

Statistical analysis: The performance of the SSI was examined with nominal logistic regression.

Results: ED patients were older than out-patients (P<0.001), with proportionally more men (P<0.05), and were more ethnically diverse than the outpatients (P<0.005). Compared to out-patients, ED patients were more depressed (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score 23.1±3.8 vs. 11.7±7.3, P<0.005) and reported a greater degree of suicidal ideation (SSI scores 25.7±7.3 vs. 4.2±8.4, P<0.0001). Nominal logistic regression for the univariate model of SSI score and group yielded a score of 16 (P<0.0001) as the best cut-point in separating groups, with a corresponding Receiver Operating Characteristic Area Under the Curve = 0.94. Of 34 patients in the total sample, only two were misclassified by SSI score = 16, with both of these being false positive for ED status. Thus, the sensitivity of the cut-point was 100% with specificity of 91%. When the model was expanded to include SSI along with age, gender, ethnicity, sedative-hypnotic use, and over-the-counter use, only SSI score remained significant as a predictor.

Conclusions: A SSI score ≥16 may be useful as an exclusion criterion for out-patients in depression clinical trials.

Keywords: Depression; emergency department; suicidal ideation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: None declared

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatterplot of scale for suicide Ideation scores according to patient locativon
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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