Objective: Disorders and handicaps in personality among people with suicide attempt are shown significantly higher than people with no attempt. Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory intends to describe the personality as consisting of temperament and character dimensions. In the current study we aimed to determine the relationship between temperament &character features of the suicide attempters with drugs and their numbers of attempts.
Method: A total of 65 patients consisting of 48 women and 17 men who presented to Emergency Room of Diskapi YB Training and Research Hospital with a suicide attempt with drug were included. Control subjects were recruited from people with no psychiatric diagnosis and no history of suicide attempt (N=76, F=%56,5). Clinical evaluation was performed using SCID-I (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders). Alongside, sociodemografic data form, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Temperament & Character Inventory (TCI) were administered to all participants.
Results: Of 65 patients who attempted suicide, 23 attempted first and 42 had at least one more attempt before. Mean scores of BDI and BAI were significantly higher in the suicide attempter group than control subjects (p=0,000 and p=0,000). Results from Temperament Dimension of TCI were as follows; scores on Novelty Seeking and Harm Avoidance were significantly higher in the attempter group (P=0,001 and P=0,000 respectively). Scores on Self Directedness and Cooperation dimensions of TCI were significantly lower in the attempter group when compared with controls (p=0,000 and p=0,024, respectively). When patients with more than one suicide attempt were compared to who attempted suicide only once, in the former group scores on Reward Dependence of TCI were significantly higher and scores on Self-Directedness of TCI were significantly lower (p=0,025 and p=0,002, respectively).
Conclusion: Findings from our study are consistent with the findings from previous studies conducted with suicide attempters using TCI. A study in this domain revealed that people with high Harm Avoidance traits, low Cooperation and Self Directedness traits had some disturbances in their cognitive executive functions (e.g., attention, visual memory and planning). Additionally some authors see the disturbances of cooperativeness and self directedness as general reşections of psychopathology. In this study we found a significant relationship between the repetition of the suicide attempts and Reward Dependence & Self Directedness. Accordingly previous studies argued sensitiveness to negative life events, emotional lability and impulsiveness as risk factors to repeated suicide attempts. In summary, people who attempt suicide seem to have some temperamental traits such as novelty seeking and harm avoidance more than healthy controls. Besides, repetition of suicide attempts is more possible in people with character traits such as low self directedness and/or high reward dependence.