@article{ref1,
title="Temperament and character personality profile in relation to suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in major depressed patients",
journal="Psychiatry research",
year="2009",
author="Conrad, Rupert and Walz, Felix H. and Geiser, Franziska and Imbierowicz, Katrin and Liedtke, R. and Wegener, Ingo",
volume="170",
number="2-3",
pages="212-217",
abstract="To prevent suicidal behaviour, it is important to better understand those personality traits associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. A sample of 394 consecutive major depressed outpatients admitted to Bonn University Hospital was subdivided into three groups: Lifetime suicide attempters (N=32; 8.1%), suicide ideators (N=133) and patients without suicide ideation (N=229). Psychodiagnostic measures embraced the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), the Symptom Checklist-90-R and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Suicide attempters and ideators showed higher scores on emotional distress and depression. Analysis of covariance (covariates: age, gender, depression) revealed that suicide attempters score higher on the temperament dimension harm avoidance compared with non-attempters. Suicide ideators could be distinguished from non-ideators by character dimensions in terms of lower self-directedness and higher self-transcendence. Our findings suggest that high harm avoidance is a personality trait associated with suicide attempt in major depression, whereas low self-directedness and high self-transcendence are related to suicidal ideation. As temperament dimensions represent the &quot;emotional core&quot; and character dimensions the &quot;cognitive core&quot; of personality, we discuss whether Cloninger's psychobiological model might be helpful to distinguish between non-suicide ideators, patients who do think about suicide, and patients initiating suicidal behaviour.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0165-1781",
doi="10.1016/j.psychres.2008.09.008",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2008.09.008"
}