Association of suicide attempts with childhood traumatic experiences in patients with major depression

Objective: Childhood traumatic experiences are widely known risk factors in the development of various psychiatric disorders and unfavorable behavior patterns, including suicide attempts. Moreover, in the course of some psychiatric disorders, suicide attempts are more frequent in patients with childhood traumatic experiences. This study explores the influence of childhood traumatic experiences on suicide attempts in patients with major depression.

Methods: Our study involved 30 patients with major depressive disorder in full remission who had attempted suicide, and 30 patients with major depressive disorder in full remission who had never attempted suicide, as well as 30 healthy controls matched with patients for age, gender, and education. All the subjects were interviewed with Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I). Subsequently, all subjects were administered Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ).

Results: Patients who had attempted suicide reported significantly higher CTQ scores for emotional abuse and emotional neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse than healthy controls. Moreover, patients who had attempted suicide reported significantly higher CTQ scores for each three subdomains than patients who had never attempted suicide. There were no significant difference between patients who had never attempted suicide and healthy controls in any of the CTQ subdomains.

Conclusions: Childhood trauma may be a risk factor for suicide attempts in patients with depression. Inquiring childhood traumatic experiences could make an important contribution to predict suicide risk in patients with depression.