If we are to have the opportunity to turn around rising suicide rates, researchers say we need to understand more about how suicide progresses – the developments that are ranging from suicidal thoughts to life-threatening acts.
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An important part of that progress is time. How long do thoughts of suicide last in a person’s mind? How long before these thoughts motivate a person to attempt suicide? And how does an individual’s perception of time affect things?
In a new study, researchers examined these questions, surveying a group of more than 280 participants.
The group included individuals who had recently attempted suicide, people with depression currently experiencing suicidal thoughts, non-suicide patients with depression, and healthy controls with no history of mental illness or drug misuse.
Participants performed various experiments, designed to measure things like their level of depression and anxiety, but also protocols that measured levels of inhibition, and a time estimation function that measures how fast or how fast they are. slow that an individual sees time passing.
In the results, the researchers found that among those who attempted suicide, the length of time they thought about suicide was controlled by two distinct patterns: those who thought about suicide about suicide for less than 5 minutes, and those who thought about it for more than three hours.
Similarly, the time of suicide action – the time difference between the suicide decision made and the resulting attempt – showed a large split in the data, with the majority of patients appearing either less than 5 minutes, or longer than three hours.
In addition, the researchers found that the perception of time slowing was related to the severity of suicidal thoughts, with individuals considering suicidal thoughts for up to three years. hours show more time slowing down in their estimated time results.
“The key message home is that large numbers of people who attempt suicide are doing so heavily,” first author and psychologist Ricardo Caceda from Stony Brook University told PsyPost.
“The second point is that individuals in a suicide crisis tend to have a very slow time, possibly contributing to a worsening in the experience of psychological distress.”
While there are limitations to what we can deduce from the results, the researchers suggest that a higher perception of slowly passing time may reveal a kind of “derealization deficits”. – or depersonalization-type ”, with similar changes in time perception seen in previous research by soldiers, and in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The experience of slowing down time or dilation in suicidal patients, who tend to be stimulated by excessive psychological pain, may then reduce the perception that it is inevitable from psychological pain,” the researchers write in their study.
“It could be assumed that the height of suicide crisis could be a divorce-like state, triggered by extreme psychological pain and characterized by a slow sense of time.”
Beyond the notions of the effects of time comprehension, the researchers hope that their new data on times associated with suicidal ideation and the time of suicide action may help inform new clinical understanding. , making doctors more aware of time – related risk factors, which may one day help. promoting suicide prevention strategies.
The results are reported in European neuropsychopharmacology.
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