Suicide Attempts and Trauma-Related Subjective Distress in People with Severe Mental Illnesses

Suicide Attempts and Trauma-Related Subjective Distress in People with Severe Mental Illnesses

We tested the relationship between subjective distress from common lifetime trauma and lifetime suicide attempts in people with severe mental illness (N = 371) including schizophrenia (109, 29.4%), schizoaffective (82, 22.1%), major depression (105, 28.3%), or bipolar I disorder (75, 20.2%). About half were women (51.2%), mean age was 47, and most were white (270, 72.8%), but included a significant proportion of minorities [African-American (41, 11.1%) and Hispanic (33, 8.9%)]. Measures included “lifetime suicide attempts” (dependent variable), trauma-related “subjective distress,”psychiatric symptoms and functioning (BASIS-24), lifetime self-injury, and gender.