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. 2022 Nov;61(4):1219-1235.
doi: 10.1111/bjc.12383. Epub 2022 Aug 1.

Emotion-related impulsivity and suicidal ideation: Towards a more specific model

Sarah Anvar  1   2 , Benjamin A Swerdlow  1   3 , David Jobes  4 , Kiara R Timpano  5 , Abby Adler Mandel  4 , Evan Kleiman  6 , Thomas Joiner  7 , Sheri L Johnson  1
Affiliations

Emotion-related impulsivity and suicidal ideation: Towards a more specific model

Sarah Anvar et al. Br J Clin Psychol. 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Objectives: Suicidal ideation is a pervasive and painful experience that varies considerably in its phenomenology. Here, we consider how one key risk variable might inform our understanding of variation in suicidal ideation: emotion-related impulsivity, the trait-like tendency towards unconstrained speech, behaviour, and cognition in the face of intense emotions. We hypothesized that emotion-related impulsivity would be tied to specific features, including severity, perceived lack of controllability, more rapidly fluctuating course, higher scores on a measure of acute suicidal affective disturbance, and more emotional and cognitive disturbance as antecedents.

Methods: We recruited two samples of adults (Ns = 421, 221) through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), with oversampling of those with suicidal ideation. Both samples completed psychometrically sound self-report measures online to assess emotion- and non-emotion-related dimensions of impulsivity and characteristics of suicidal ideation.

Results: One form of emotion-related impulsivity related to the severity, uncontrollability, dynamic course, and affective and cognitive precursors of ideation.

Conclusions: Despite limitations of the cross-sectional design and self-report measures, the current findings highlight the importance of specificity in considering key dimensions of impulsivity and suicidal ideation.

Keywords: acute suicidal affective disturbance; emotion-related impulsivity; suicidal ideation; urgency.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

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