[Anger and risk of suicide. Study of elderly psychiatric patients]

A brief review of the literature on anger, depression, and suicidal behavior is presented. One problem of these investigations is in a lack of differentiation between the concepts of anger and anger expression. Especially, the question remains of whether depression is associated with anger turned outward or may be understood as a correlate of hostility directed to the subject. Self-destructive actions may be predicted more accurately if, in addition to severity of depression, anger and anger expression are included. In the present study of 48 older psychiatric patients the following variables were assessed: Measures for intelligence, the Self-rating Depression Scale of Zung, the questionnaire for assessing suicidality of Pöldinger, the number of attempted suicides, and the State-Trait-Anger Expression Inventory of Schwenkmezger, Hodapp and Spielberger. Anger-out and Anger Control, in contrast to depression, differentiate between patients with and without suicides attempts. The actual risk for suicide, assessed by the questionnaire for suicidality, is significantly predicted by the depression scale. The different associations of anger and depression with suicide indicators and the relevance of these results for diagnostics and prophylaxis are discussed.