Dr. Brian Albanese of Texas A&M University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, along with a team of graduate students in the Clinical Psychology program at TAMU and Dr. Norman Schmidt from Florida State University, recently published a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders on the connection between suicidal thoughts and behaviors and avoidance connected to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.
The study recruited 82 participants, who had experienced trauma and reported elevated PTSD symptoms. Over a two-week period, participants completed short daily surveys about how often they experienced trauma-related memories and how much they tried to avoid those memories.
Results indicated that on days when participants had more trauma memories, those with a history of suicide attempts showed higher levels of avoidance compared to participants who had never attempted suicide. However, this association was not maintained a few days later, suggesting that patterns of avoidance strategies in response to memories of a trauma may differ across those with and without a history of suicide attempts.
These data support the idea that people with a greater propensity toward avoidance may be at heightened risk for both PTSD and suicide. However, this association may be more complex than initially thought, and further research is necessary to investigate how individual differences affect the relationship.
This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health Loan Repayment Program (L30MH127669).