Daily Suicidal Surge and Attempted Suicide in Borderline Personality Disorder
Suicidality is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD), yet little work has accounted for why only a small subset of those that have thoughts of suicide, commit suicide. In this study we compared early stage suicidal crises, where affective disturbance is linked to suicidal ideation at the within-person level (i.e., suicidal surges) across suicide attempters and non-attempters. We used multilevel structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis that a history of attempted suicide predicts a stronger dynamic link of daily affect and impulsivity with suicidal ideation. 141 patients diagnosed with BPD, 97 of which had a history of medically serious suicide attempts, and 52 healthy controls completed a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol (N=3790 days). All models suggested that people generally experiencing more negative and less positive affect and high in impulsivity, also tend to ideate more about suicide on average. Moreover, within-person associations of negative and positive affect with suicidal ideation (i.e., suicidal surges) were greater among attempters in comparison to non-attempters, and healthy controls. This suggests that the diathesis for suicidal behavior is expressed in the dynamic processes linking affect and suicidal ideation. Because these within-person links were amplified in attempters compared to non-attempters, suicidal surges may index specific, potentially lethal, processes that generalize beyond BPD and may have clinical value as predictors of suicidal risk.