Millgram Yael, Goldenberg Amit, Nock Matthew K
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University.
Psychology Department, Harvard University.
J Psychopathol Clin Sci. 2025 Jan;134(1):18-30. doi: 10.1037/abn0000939. Epub 2024 Oct 7.
Approximately 9% of people think about suicide during their lifetime. Suicidal thoughts are consistently associated with perceived failures in emotion regulation. However, factors contributing to these perceptions remain insufficiently clear. New evidence suggests that when people know little about the cause of their emotions (i.e., low source attribution of emotion), they perceive themselves as less successful in regulating them. Therefore, emotion regulation deficits in people with suicidal thoughts might be related to lower knowledge about sources of emotions. We examined this question in two ecological momentary assessment studies (₁ = 396, ₂ = 195). We found that participants with current suicidal thoughts knew less about the sources of their emotions compared to participants with no suicidal thoughts history (Studies 1 and 2), and even when compared to controls with similar levels of psychiatric symptoms but no history of suicidal thoughts (Study 2). Using language processing, we found that written descriptions of the source of participants' emotions were less concrete among those with suicidal thoughts compared to participants with no suicidal thoughts history. Among suicidal participants, suicidal thoughts were more likely to be present in moments when participants knew less than usual about the source of their negative emotions (Study 2), and low knowledge of the source was associated with more frequent and prolonged suicidal thoughts (Studies 1 and 2). Finally, lower perceived success in emotion regulation mediated the association between source attribution of emotion and the occurrence of suicidal thoughts. Findings suggest that reduced knowledge about the source of negative emotions might increase the risk for suicidal thinking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
大约9%的人在一生中会有过自杀念头。自杀念头一直与情绪调节方面的感知失败有关。然而，导致这些感知的因素仍不够明确。新证据表明，当人们对自己情绪的原因了解甚少时（即情绪的低来源归因），他们会觉得自己在调节情绪方面不太成功。因此，有自杀念头的人的情绪调节缺陷可能与对情绪来源的了解较少有关。我们在两项生态瞬时评估研究中检验了这个问题（研究1 = 396人，研究2 = 195人）。我们发现，与没有自杀念头史的参与者相比，当前有自杀念头的参与者对自己情绪的来源了解更少（研究1和研究2），甚至与有相似精神症状水平但没有自杀念头史的对照组相比也是如此（研究2）。通过语言处理，我们发现，与没有自杀念头史的参与者相比，有自杀念头的参与者对其情绪来源的书面描述更不具体。在有自杀念头的参与者中，当他们对负面情绪来源的了解比平时更少时，更有可能出现自杀念头（研究2），而对来源的低了解与更频繁、更持久的自杀念头有关（研究1和研究2）。最后，情绪调节方面较低的感知成功介导了情绪来源归因与自杀念头发生之间的关联。研究结果表明，对负面情绪来源的了解减少可能会增加自杀念头的风险。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
