The Effect Of Affective Lability On Suicide

Affective lability refers to the tendency to fluctuate between different mood states,including anger,depression,anxiety,and hypomania.Previous studies have used different research methods to explore the effect of affective lability on suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among different subjects.The results shown that affective lability is a high risk factor for suicidal ideation but the impact on suicide attempts is inconsistent.Previous studies have mainly viewed affective lability as a whole,exploring its impact on suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.However few studies have explored the different dimensions of affective lability impact on suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.The current studies aimed at exploring the effect of affective lability and different dimensions on suicide ideation and suicide attempt among Chinese University undergraduates,to provide a new perspective for the study of affective lability and suicide.The study one examined the reliability and validity of the Affective Lability Scale among Chinese undergraduates.A sample of 1262 undergraduates were administrated the Chinese version of Affective Lability Scale(ALS).The Five Factor Inventory-Neuroticism Subscale,the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Neuroticism Subscale,the Affect Intensity Measure,the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale,and the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-Borderline Personality Disorder Subscale were chosen as the criterion-related indicators.Internal consistency reliability,split half reliability and test-retest reliability were used as reliability index.Then,the effect of affective lability on suicide ideation and suicide attempt was explored in study two among Chinese undergraduates.According to the suicide ideation and suicide attempt screening,2005 undergraduate students were divided into normal subgroup,suicidal ideation subgroup and suicide attempt subgroup.The Affective Lability Scale,the Suicide ideation screening questionnaire,the Suicide attempt screening questionnaire,the Affect Intensity Measure,the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale,the Self-reporting Inventory-Depression Subscale,and the Self-reporting Inventory-Anxiety Subscale were administrated to 2005 undergraduate students.The Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyse the effect of total score and different dimensions of affective lability on suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.SPSS 17.0 and Lisrel 8.70 were used to analyze the data.The conclusions are as follow:1.The Affective Lability Scale Chinese Revised(ALS-CR)is a reliable and valid instrument with six factors,which can be used to measure the level of the Affective Lability.2.The Affective lability was significantly and positively related with other highly risk factors for suicide including depression,anxiety,impulsivity,and affect intensity.Females reported higher level of affective lability than males,and suicide ideation subgroup and suicide attempt subgroup reported higher level of affective lability than normal subgroup.3.Compare to the normal subgroup,the affective lability can significantly predicted Suicide ideation and Suicide attempt.After controlling for depression,anxiety,impulsivity,and affect intensity,affective lability still significantly predicted Suicide ideation,but didn’t significantly predicted Suicide attempt.4.Rapid changes in depression and anxiety and Rapid changes in depression and hypomania significantly predicted Suicide ideation compare to the normal subgroup.After controlling for the depression,anxiety,impulsivity,and affect intensity,Rapid changes in depression and anxiety and Rapid changes in depression and hypomania significantly predicted suicide ideation,other mood state rapid changes didn’t predict suicide ideation.The six mood state rapid changes didn’t predict Suicide attempt compare to the normal subgroup.