@article{ref1,
title="Suicidal mental imagery in psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents",
journal="Research on child and adolescent psychopathology",
year="2021",
author="Wolff, Jennifer C. and Hunt, Jeffrey and Spirito, Anthony and Liu, Richard T. and Burke, Taylor A. and Nesi, Jaqueline and Lawrence, Hannah R.",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="Suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescents and suicide rates in this population have increased in recent years. A critical step in preventing  suicide is improving the accuracy of suicide risk assessment. Measurement of  suicidal cognitions typically emphasizes assessment of verbal thoughts about  suicide. Recent research suggests, however, that suicidal mental imagery, or  mentally imagining suicide-related content, may be even more strongly associated  with suicidal behavior. No research has evaluated suicidal mental imagery in  adolescents, however. The present study evaluated suicidal mental imagery and  suicidal verbal thoughts in a sample of adolescents (N = 159) admitted to an  adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit. Of those adolescents who reported suicidal  cognitions, 63.73% reported suicidal mental imagery. Adolescents who reported  suicidal mental imagery had 2.40 greater odds of having made a suicide attempt,  after accounting for history of suicidal verbal thoughts and relevant covariates. <br><br>FINDINGS suggest that suicidal mental imagery should be directly assessed when  evaluating suicide risk, and that treatments may be optimized by targeting both  suicidal verbal thoughts and suicidal mental imagery.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2730-7166",
doi="10.1007/s10802-020-00750-4",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00750-4"
}