Distraction by emotional stimuli: use of a Stroop task with suicide attempters

The performance on a modified Stroop task by patients who had recently attempted suicide by overdose was compared with that of hospital control patients and non-hospital members of a subject panel. All groups took longer to name colours of emotional words than neutral words, but the extent of the disruption was greatest for the overdose subjects on words which were specifically related to an overdose theme. The extent of disruption was more clearly predicted by self-rated depression than by any other mood.