Abstract
Objective: Two temperamental components that are mostly associated with suicide are high novelty seeking (NS) and high harm avoidance (HA). This study aimed to evaluate the temperament and character personality dimensions of self-poisoning in suicidal attempters in an Iranian population. Methods: A descriptive-analytic study was conducted with random sampling in which 77 self-poisoning patients and equal normal counterparts were selected. Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and clinical interview were used as study procedures. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 18 using chi-square, MannWhitney U and regression. P values<0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: Findings showed that people attempting suicide were significantly different from general population in terms of character and temperament. NS and HA yielded high scores in the suicide group, while reward dependence (RD), self-directedness (SD), cooperativeness (CO) and self-transcendence (ST) variables revealed significantly higher scores in the healthy group. No significant difference was observed among suicide attempters in terms of gender. Conclusion: The results confirm the difference between non-suicidal individuals and suicide attempters in terms of character and temperament in a way that suicidal patients have high harm-avoidance and introversion. In addition, the history of attempts and early alcohol consumption might be considered as suicide re-attempt predictors.
Highlights
Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents worldwide, albeit suicide attempts occur 10-20 times higher [1]
Two temperamental components that are more closely associated with suicide are high novelty seeking (NS) and high harm-avoidance (HA), and other less relevant personality components include low reward dependence (RD), self-directedness (SD) and cooperativeness (CO) as well as high self-transcendence (ST) [11,12]
These results show that the multiple correlation coefficients for the last model [3] could predict up to 65% of suicide attempts in suicidal individuals
Summary
Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents worldwide, albeit suicide attempts occur 10-20 times higher [1]. Two temperamental components that are more closely associated with suicide are high novelty seeking (NS) and high harm-avoidance (HA), and other less relevant personality components include low reward dependence (RD), self-directedness (SD) and cooperativeness (CO) as well as high self-transcendence (ST) [11,12]. All of these points demand special attention for proper planning in preventing suicide, but raises the necessity of a comprehensive information system for an accurate recording of suicidal cases in Iran as well. The authors focused on temperament and character dimensions in patients with self-poisoning suicide attempts at Sina hospital of Tabriz, Iran
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