Research > Measuring Implicit Associations about Suicide
Measuring Implicit Associations about Suicide
This study is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health
Principal Investigator: Matthew K. Nock, PhD
About the Principal Investigator
Matthew K. Nock is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He received his M.S. (2000), M.Phil. (2001) and Ph.D. (2003) in psychology from Yale University. He completed his clinical internship at the NYU-Child Study Center and Bellevue Hospital Center (2003) and joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University the same year. His research focuses on a) determining the functions of self-injurious thoughts and behavior (SITB) in adolescents, b) examining decision-making, problem-solving, emotional reactivity, distress tolerance, the experience of physical pain, and other factors influence the developmental and maintenance to SITB, c) learning about the experience of SITB in everyday life, outside of the laboratory setting, and d) enhancing methods for assessing and treating SITB.
Project Description
While suicide is among the leading causes of death worldwide, current methods for evaluating suicide risk rely almost exclusively on self report of suicidal thoughts and intent, which can provide biased or limited information as many suicidal individuals may deny self-injurious thoughts in order to avoid hospitalization or to facilitate discharge from hospital care. The primary goal of the study is to evaluate the usefulness of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a computerized reaction-time task that evaluates individuals' automatic associations about different concepts, for examining implicit associations about suicide among individuals presenting to an emergency department at a major metropolitan hospital.The specific aims of this research are to (1) evaluate the validity of the suicide IAT by using it to assess implicit associations about suicide in a psychiatric emergency department setting among (a) individuals who have made a recent suicide attempt, (b) individuals who report suicidal thoughts who have not made a suicide attempt, and (c) individuals presenting to the emergency department who deny a recent suicide attempt or current suicidal thoughts; (2) evaluate changes in implicit associations about suicide over the course of hospitalization; and (3) evaluate the ability of the implicit association measured in the hospital to predict suicidal thoughts and attempts over a six-month follow-up period. The results of this research have significant implications for research and clinical efforts related to suicide assessment.