Suicidal behavior on Axis VI: clinical data supporting a sixth Axis for DSM-V

Oquendo and colleagues (Oquendo, Baca-García, Mann, & Giner, 2008; Oquendo & Currier, 2009) recommend that DSM-V emphasize suicide risk assessment on a sixth axis, thereby increasing regularity of suicide risk assessments.

We propose that evidence of nonredundancy with Axis V - Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) is one piece of data that can serve as a starting point for a line of research establishing incremental predictive utility for a separate suicide risk assessment in the DSM framework.

A standardized suicide risk assessment protocol, measures of depressive, anxious, and eating disordered symptomatology, as well as an index of comorbidity were administered to a sample of 412 adult outpatients.

Our data indicate that data from standardized suicide risk assessments are associated with indices of symptomatology severity as well as comorbidity, controlling for GAF.

These results support the nonredundancy of the assessments and suggest the utility of longitudinal investigations of the predictive utility of a sixth DSM axis in the assessment of suicide risk.