The relationship between menstrual cycle phases and suicide attempts

Area of Science:

• Reproductive Endocrinology
• Psychiatry
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Prior research on the menstrual cycle and suicide attempts relies on self-reported cycle phase, potentially introducing bias.
• Inconsistencies in previous findings may stem from sample selection and menstrual cycle assessment methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if sample selection and assessment methods explain inconsistencies in prior studies.
• To determine the relationship between menstrual cycle phase and suicide attempts.
• To explore the role of sexual hormones in suicide attempts.

Main Methods:

• Compared clinical and serum hormonal assessments for menstrual cycle phase determination.
• Analyzed suicide attempt data from 134 women post-attempt and 108 female blood donors as controls.
• Divided the menstrual cycle into follicular, midcycle, and luteal phases, also considering menstrual and nonmenstrual phases within the follicular phase.

Main Results:

• Low agreement (kappa values 0.40-0.50) was found between clinical and endocrinological methods for cycle phase assessment.
• Suicide attempts were significantly more frequent during the follicular phase, especially the menstrual phase, than anticipated.
• Certain sampling methods yielded sample sizes comparable to hormonal assessments.

Conclusions:

• Hormonal determination is essential for studies linking psychiatric symptoms and menstrual cycle phases.
• Sample selection methods can introduce bias in research on suicide attempts and the menstrual cycle.
• Further research is required to confirm the increased frequency of suicide attempts during the follicular/menstrual phase.