Recognizing states of psychological vulnerability to suicidal behavior: a Bayesian network of artificial intelligence applied to a clinical sample.

Abstract

This study aimed to determine conditional dependence relationships of variables that contribute to psychological vulnerability associated with suicide risk. A Bayesian network (BN) was developed and applied to establish conditional dependence relationships among variables for each individual subject studied. These conditional dependencies represented the different states that patients could experience in relation to suicidal behavior (SB). The clinical sample included 650 mental health patients with mood and anxiety symptomatology. The results mainly indicated that variables within the Bayesian network are part of each patient’s state of psychological vulnerability and have the potential to impact such states and that these variables coexist and are relatively stable over time. These results have enabled us to offer a tool to detect states of psychological vulnerability associated with suicide risk. If we accept that suicidal behaviors (vulnerability, ideation, and suicidal attempts) exist in constant change and are unstable, we can investigate what individuals experience at specific moments to become better able to intervene in a timely manner to prevent such behaviors. Future testing of the tool developed in this study is needed, not only in specialized mental health environments but also in other environments with high rates of mental illness, such as primary healthcare facilities and educational institutions (schools and universities).

Propiedades psicométricas del Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-11) en Argentina: Un instrumento para monitoreo y feedback en psicoterapia

“…Uno de los ejemplos más difundidos es el del Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45;Lambert et al, 1996;Lara, Cruz, Vacarezza, Florenzano, & Trapp, 2008), cuyo uso en países como Chile y Argentina es frecuente (p. ej., Barros et al, 2020;Gómez-Penedo, Zilcha-Mano, & Roussos, 2019;Roussos, Gómez-Penedo, & Muiños, 2018;Zilcha-Mano & Errázuriz, 2015). Dicho cuestionario se presenta como una medida psicométricamente rigurosa, que abarca los motivos de consulta más comunes de las personas que solicitan psicoterapia, y que es sensible a modificaciones en períodos breves, lo que facilita su uso para monitorear procesos de cambio.…”