Decision-Making Performance Of Undergraduate Suicide Attempters And Its Influencing Factors

The stress-diathesis model of suicide holds that suicide is a result of the interaction between stress factors and susceptibility to suicidal behavior.Many studies have found that suicide attempters had impaired decision-making,which may be a cognitive vulnerability to suicidal behavior,but the relationship between suicide ideation and decision-making is not clear.Suicide attempters have showed a disconnection between what they "know" and what they "do",i.e.knowing which options are advantageous,they still can't make good decisions,suggesting that their implicit emotional system may have damaged.Therefore,we use control-group design in college students,including suicide attempt group(n=11),suicide ideation group(n=15)and normal control group(n=16)to explore the relationship between suicide attempt,suicide ideation and decision-making performance in the Iowa Gambling Task,and explore the role of explicit knowledge and emotion signals on decision-making performance.Results: a.In terms of decision-making performance,there was no significant difference between suicide attempt group,suicide ideation group and normal control group,and the decision-making performance of all subjects were getting better with the progress of the task.b.In the level of explicit knowledge,three groups had no significant difference in the scores of subjective experience.Along with the progress of the task,the scores of subjective experience were gradually increased,which was also positively related to the net scores of corresponding module.And,in all of the subjects,people with high level of explicit knowledge performed better than people with low level.c.In terms of implicit emotional signals,the anticipatory skin conductance responses of disadvantageous decks was greater than the amplitude of advantageous decks in the three groups,and autonomic response had marginal significant correlation with decision-making performance in the whole participants.d.The relationship between personality variables and decision-making performance was not significant in suicide attempters and in all subjects.Conclusion: Compared with normal control group,suicide attempt group and suicide ideation group have no decision-making impairment,and their explicit knowledge and implicit emotion system are not damaged.For all subjects,people with higher levels of explicit knowledge had better decision-making performance both in module and overall level of the task,which suggests the integrity of implicit system can assure explicit knowledge to effectively guide decision.