Emotion-related impulsivity and suicidal ideation: Towards a more specific model

Suicidal ideation is a pervasive and painful experience that varies considerably in its phenomenology. Here, we consider how one key risk variable might inform our understanding of variation in suicidal ideation: emotion-related impulsivity, the trait-like tendency towards unconstrained speech, behaviour, and cognition in the face of intense emotions. We hypothesized that emotion-related impulsivity would be tied to specific features, including severity, perceived lack of controllability, more rapidly fluctuating course, higher scores on a measure of acute suicidal affective disturbance, and more emotional and cognitive disturbance as antecedents.

We recruited two samples of adults (Ns = 421, 221) through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), with oversampling of those with suicidal ideation. Both samples completed psychometrically sound self-report measures online to assess emotion- and non-emotion-related dimensions of impulsivity and characteristics of suicidal ideation.

One form of emotion-related impulsivity related to the severity, uncontrollability, dynamic course, and affective and cognitive precursors of ideation.

Despite limitations of the cross-sectional design and self-report measures, the current findings highlight the importance of specificity in considering key dimensions of impulsivity and suicidal ideation.