Active and Passive Attentional Processing in Adolescent Suicide Attempters: An Event-Related Potential Study

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents. Suicidal behavior is associated with impairments in attention. Attention can be directed toward relevant events in the environment either actively, under voluntary control, or passively, by external salient events. The extent to which the risk for suicidal behavior affects active and passive attention is largely unknown.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while 14 adolescents with acute suicidal behavior and 14 healthy controls performed an auditory 3-stimulus oddball task. The task consisted of standard (80%), target (10%), and novel (10%) stimuli. The participants were instructed to press a button upon presentation of the target. The novel stimuli were unexpected and irrelevant to the target detection task.

Accuracy of target detection was slightly but significantly reduced in the suicidal group. There were no significant differences in the amplitude of the target-N2 or -P3b between groups. There was a slight, but nonsignificant, increase in the amplitude of the novel-N2 and -P3 in the suicidal group.

This is the first study to explore both passive and controlled aspects of attention using ERPs in adolescents with acute suicidal behavior. Although there were no significant ERP group differences, this is an important step in identifying objective markers of suicide risk among adolescents.