Building a neurocognitive profile of suicidal risk in severe mental disorders

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Anna Comparelli, Sapienza University Rome; Valentina Corigliano, Department of Psychiatry Roma 1; Benedetta Montalbani, Sapienza University Rome; Adele Nardella, Department of Psychiatry and Substance Abuse; Antonella De Carolis, Sapienza University Rome; Lorenzo Stampatore, Sapienza University Rome; Paride Bargagna, Sapienza University Rome; Francesca Forcina, Sapienza University Rome; Dorian Lamis, Emory University; Maurizio Pompili, Sapienza University Rome
• Language: English
• Date: 2022-09-26
• Publisher: BMC
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © The Author(s) 2022
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04240-3
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: BMC PSYCHIATRY
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1
• Start Page: 628
• End Page: 628
• Grant/Funding Information: This research received no external funding.
• Keywords: SYMPTOMS; CONSENSUS COGNITIVE BATTERY; Suicide ideation; Psychiatry; SOCIAL COGNITION; Neurocognition; BEHAVIOR; Suicide attempt; Social cognition; IDEATION; VERSION; MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; MEMORY; Science & Technology; SCHIZOPHRENIA
• Research Categories: Psychology, Behavioral; Psychology, Clinical; Psychology, Cognitive

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Research on the influence of neurocognitive factors on suicide risk, regardless of the diagnosis, is inconsistent. Recently, suicide risk studies propose applying a trans-diagnostic framework in line with the launch of the Research Domain Criteria Cognitive Systems model. In the present study, we highlight the extent of cognitive impairment using a standardized battery in a psychiatric sample stratified for different degrees of suicidal risk. We also differentiate in our sample various neurocognitive profiles associated with different levels of risk. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We divided a sample of 106 subjects into three groups stratified by suicide risk level: Suicide Attempt (SA), Suicidal Ideation (SI), Patient Controls (PC) and Healthy Controls (HC). We conducted a multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) for each cognitive domain measured through the standardized battery MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB). RESULTS: We found that the group of patients performed worse than the group of healthy controls on most domains; social cognition was impaired in the suicide risk groups compared both to HC and PC. Patients in the SA group performed worse than those in the SI group. CONCLUSION: Social cognition impairment may play a crucial role in suicidality among individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness as it is involved in both SI and SA; noteworthy, it is more compromised in the SA group fitting as a marker of risk severity.