Brown Bradley A, Rottenberg Jonathan, Goodman Fallon R
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.
Suicide Life Threat Behav. 2023 Dec;53(6):968-980. doi: 10.1111/sltb.12996. Epub 2023 Aug 28.
Social anxiety is associated with elevated suicidal ideation (SI). One potential explanation is that socially anxious persons experience frequent interpersonal stressors that elicit SI. Longitudinal designs with temporal ordering are needed to adequately test this hypothesis. Therefore, this study leveraged a longitudinal design combining trait and daily reports.
Two hundred eleven community adult participants with elevated levels of depression and/or social anxiety completed social anxiety and SI measures at baseline and again at a 1.5-month follow-up. Between these assessments, participants completed a 14-day diary study that assessed three forms of interpersonal distress: unfavorable social comparisons, perceived barriers to seeking social support, and loneliness.
As predicted, simple mediation models revealed that baseline social anxiety had a significant indirect effect on SI severity at 1.5 months postbaseline via unfavorable social comparisons (indirect effect: β = 0.07, p < 0.05) and barriers to seeking support (indirect effect: β = 0.08, p < 0.05); however, social anxiety did not have a significant indirect effect on SI severity through loneliness.
Study results are consistent with the proposition that increases in interpersonal distress may explain socially anxious persons' vulnerability to SI. Implications of these findings for the research, assessment, and treatment of suicidality in social anxiety are discussed.
社交焦虑与自杀意念（SI）的增加有关。一种可能的解释是，社交焦虑的人经常经历引发自杀意念的人际压力源。需要采用具有时间顺序的纵向设计来充分检验这一假设。因此，本研究采用了一种结合特质报告和日常报告的纵向设计。
211名抑郁和/或社交焦虑水平较高的社区成年参与者在基线时以及1.5个月随访时再次完成了社交焦虑和自杀意念测量。在这些评估之间，参与者完成了一项为期14天的日记研究，该研究评估了三种人际困扰形式：不利的社会比较、寻求社会支持的感知障碍和孤独感。
正如预测的那样，简单中介模型显示，基线社交焦虑通过不利的社会比较（间接效应：β = 0.07，p < 0.05）和寻求支持的障碍（间接效应：β = 0.08，p < 0.05）对基线后1.5个月时的自杀意念严重程度有显著间接影响；然而，社交焦虑通过孤独感对自杀意念严重程度没有显著间接影响。
研究结果与以下观点一致，即人际困扰的增加可能解释社交焦虑者易患自杀意念的原因。讨论了这些发现对社交焦虑中自杀行为的研究、评估和治疗的意义。
