The mirror effect: Self-awareness alone increases suicide thought accessibility

Suicidal ideations and self-dehumanization in recently detoxified patients with severe alcohol use disorder: an experimental exploration through joint explicit-implicit measures

BACKGROUND

Metadehumanization (the feeling of being considered as less than human by others) is a pervasive phenomenon in psychiatric states, notably promoting self-dehumanization and suicide antecedents. However, its role in suicidal ideations among patients with addictive disorders remains unexplored. We thus investigated the involvement of metadehumanization/self-dehumanization in suicidal ideations and suicidal thoughts interference in severe alcohol use disorder.

METHODS

We measured metadehumanization, suicidal ideations, and desire for social contact through questionnaires among 35 recently detoxified patients with severe alcohol use disorder (26 males). We measured animalistic/mechanistic self-dehumanization using an Implicit Association Task, and suicidal thoughts interference using a Stroop Task with suicide-related words. We performed regression analyses while controlling for depression/anxiety.

RESULTS

Animalistic self-dehumanization was positively associated with suicidal thoughts interference and with decreased desire for social interactions, such link being absent for metadehumanization or mechanistic self-dehumanization.

CONCLUSIONS

This link between self-dehumanization and suicide-related factors suggests that a reduced sense of belonging to humanity is associated with self-harm antecedents. Results also emphasize the importance of using indirect measures to investigate sensitive variables, such as self-dehumanization and suicidal thoughts.

Altered cortical morphology in major depression disorder patients with suicidality

Background

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with high risk of suicide, but the biological underpinnings of suicidality in MDD patients are far from conclusive. Previous neuroimaging studies using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) demonstrated that depressed individuals with suicidal thoughts or behaviors exhibit specific cortical structure alterations. To complement VBM findings, surface-based morphometry (SBM) can provide more details into gray matter structure, including the cortical complexity, cortical thickness and sulcal depth for brain images.

Objective

This study aims to use SBM to investigate cortical morphology alterations to obtain evidence for neuroanatomical alterations in depressed patients with suicidality.

Methods

Here, 3D T1-weighted MR images of brain from 39 healthy controls, 40 depressed patients without suicidality (patient controls), and 39 with suicidality (suicidal groups) were analyzed based on SBM to estimate the fractal dimension, gyrification index, sulcal depth, and cortical thickness using the Computational Anatomy Toolbox. Correlation analyses were performed between clinical data and cortical surface measurements from patients.

Results

Surface-based morphometry showed decreased sulcal depth in the parietal, frontal, limbic, occipital and temporal regions and decreased fractal dimension in the frontal regions in depressed patients with suicidality compared to both healthy and patient controls. Additionally, in patients with depression, the sulcal depth of the left caudal anterior cingulate cortex was negatively correlated with Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores.

Conclusions

Depressed patients with suicidality had abnormal cortical morphology in some brain regions within the default mode network, frontolimbic circuitry and temporal regions. These structural deficits may be associated with the dysfunction of emotional processing and impulsivity control. This study provides insights into the underlying neurobiology of the suicidal brain.

Suicidal Ideation in Elite Schools: A Test of the Interpersonal Theory and the Escape Theory of Suicide

OBJECTIVE

The present study compared the ability of two contemporary theories of suicidal behavior-the interpersonal and escape theories of suicide-to predict suicidal ideation. The interpersonal theory proposes that the interaction of perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness predicts suicidal ideation. The escape theory proposes that feelings of failure predict suicidal ideation and that escape motivation mediates this relationship. The present study intended to determine which of the two theories more successfully explains suicidal ideation.

METHOD

A sample of 306 students from elite schools in Morocco (193 women, M_age  = 21.21 years, predominantly Muslims) completed a questionnaire assessing feelings of failure and escape motivation, perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, suicide ideation, and control variables.

RESULTS

In line with previous research, separate tests revealed support for the two theories. Interestingly, when entered simultaneously in a multiple regression analysis, the two frameworks explained a unique and cumulative part of the variance in suicidal ideation. Moreover, the effects remained significant after controlling for past suicide attempts, depression, hopelessness, and stress.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that combining the interpersonal and escape theories of suicide could help better explain the emergence of suicidal ideation among college students.

The Mirror Effect: A Preregistered Replication

When individuals are exposed to their own image in a mirror, known to increase self-awareness, they may show increased accessibility of suicide-related words (a phenomenon labeled “the mirror effect”; Selimbegović & Chatard, 2013). We attempted to replicate this effect in a pre-registered study (N = 150). As in the original study, self-awareness was manipulated using a mirror and recognition latencies for accurately detecting suicide-related words, negative words, and neutral words in a lexical decision task were assessed. We found no evidence of the mirror effect in pre-registered analyses. A multiverse analysis revealed a significant mirror effect only when excluding extreme observations. An equivalence TOST test did not yield evidence for or against the mirror effect. Overall, the results suggest that the original effect was a false positive or that the conditions for obtaining it (in terms of statistical power and/or outlier detection method) are not yet fully understood. Implications for the mirror effect and recommendations for pre-registered replications are discussed.

Instrumental rationality and suicide in schizophrenia: a case for rational suicide?

It is estimated that up to 7500 people develop schizophrenia each year in the UK. Schizophrenia has significant consequences, with 28% of the excess mortality in schizophrenia being attributed to suicide. Previous research suggests that suicide in schizophrenia may be more related to affective factors such as depression and hopelessness, rather than psychotic symptoms themselves. Considering suicide in schizophrenia within this framework enables us to develop a novel philosophical approach, in which suicide may not be related to loss of self-consciousness, thought processing dysfunctions or perception disturbances. The action of suicide may be due neither to persistent hallucinations nor other psychotic symptoms, such as delusional beliefs, but to other underexamined, perhaps rational reasons, such as extreme social isolation, severe depression or emotional withdrawal. This paper does not examine the moral character of suicide. Instead, it argues that we should conceive the action of suicide in schizophrenia as an act that is not necessarily irrational. People with schizophrenia might end their life based on reasons if suicide is the best means to achieve their ends. However, the paper does not support assisted suicide. It aims to provide a better understanding of the reasons why people take their own lives and suggests that understanding can inform effective interventions to reduce high rates of suicide.

Self-Consciousness or Misattribution Effect in the Induced Hypocrisy Paradigm? Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…

In a forced compliance situation, Scheier and Carver have shown that making high private self-consciousness salient through exposure to a mirror inhibits the arousal of dissonance and the subsequent attitude change. Based on these results, the aim of our study is to examine an alternate theoretical interpretation of the absence of attitude change. From our point of view, the mirror could have the status of a misattribution cue, thus maintaining the arousal. To test this hypothesis within the induced hypocrisy paradigm, participants first completed the private self-consciousness scale. Then they took part in one of the following conditions: (1) no mirror/no hypocrisy, (2) no mirror/hypocrisy, and (3) mirror/hypocrisy. Behavioral change and psychological discomfort were measured. Results indicated that participants in the mirror/hypocrisy condition were the most inclined to change and reported the greatest psychological discomfort. These results revealed that participants experienced dissonance when exposed to the mirror and support the hypothesis of misattribution.

Self-reference in suicidal behaviour

INTRODUCTION

Several lines of evidence suggest a perturbed sense of self in people who attempt suicide, but it has rarely been experimentally studied. Here, we aimed to explore in this population the narrative self through explicit self-perception and the self-reference effect in memory.

METHODS

Forty-seven patients with a mood disorder, including 20 with a personal history of suicide attempt, completed a self-referential task. During the encoding phase, they were presented with personality traits and had to successively judge whether each trait described themselves ("self condition") or was a desirable trait, in general ("general condition"). Then, they were unexpectedly asked to retrieve as many previously presented traits as possible (free recall phase).

RESULTS

Suicide attempters did not differ from non-attempter patients in any self-reference measures. Moreover, none of these measures correlated with current suicidal ideas. During the encoding phase, patients in both groups attributed negative traits to themselves more often than they considered them to be desirable, in general, with an opposite pattern for positive traits. The number of negative traits during the self but not the general condition was correlated with depression, anxiety, and mental pain levels, whereas depression and mental pain levels were correlated with suicidal ideas. No self-reference effect in memory was found.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, measures of the narrative self were not directly associated with suicidality. However, biased self-perception was related to painful and depressive feelings, which were in turn related to suicidal ideas. More research on self-related processing during the suicidal process is warranted.

Single exposure to disclaimers on airbrushed thin ideal images increases negative thought accessibility

Disclaimers on airbrushed thin ideal images can attract attention to the thin ideal standard promoted by the advertisements, which can be damaging rather than helpful. In this study, 48 female college students were exposed to a thin ideal image including a disclaimer, a neutral sentence, or nothing. Two weeks and two months after this, they were again exposed to the same image but with no accompanying text in any of the conditions. Negative thought accessibility was assessed three times, after each exposure to the thin-ideal image, using reaction time measures. Participants randomly assigned to the disclaimer condition systematically showed greater accessibility of negative thoughts than those in the other two conditions, irrespective of the time of measurement. These results suggest that disclaimers on airbrushed images may have some counter-productive effects by accentuating the problems that they precisely aim to address.