Grant: Project Grant

Millions of Canadians think about suicide, but what leads so many of them to ultimately attempt suicide remains elusive. Innovative research is critically necessary to improve our limited ability to predict who will attempt suicide to prevent loss of life. Existing approaches to suicide prevention concentrate mainly on symptoms and historical risk factors that rely almost exclusively on the self-report of an at-risk person and their close others. At the same time, many risk factors traditionally linked to a person's likelihood of attempting suicide are now recognized to be similarly associated with suicidal ideation alone. To address these challenges, researchers are therefore exploring diverse behavioural and biological risk factors that drive the transition from suicidal ideation to suicide attempt. Moreover, it is imperative for research on suicide risk to develop approaches that combine self-report symptoms, behaviours and brain activation to generate a "risk index" that can be used by clinicians to predict any one person's chance of attempting suicide in the future. In this research, we first seek to identify new behavioural deficits and neural dysfunctions underpinning impulse control and decision-making that show promise to distinguish depressed adults with lifetime suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt compared to those with suicidal ideation alone and no suicidal ideation or suicide attempt. We then use an advanced technique to combine self-report risk factors with our newly identified behavioural deficits and neural dysfunctions to generate a "risk index" to calculate any one person's likelihood of attempting suicide in the next 3 years. This research will deepen insights into underlying factors that drive the transition from suicidal ideation to suicide attempt in at-risk depressed adults, encourage the development of new integrated behavioural and biological interventions to prevent suicide, and ultimately curb suicide rates in Canada and worldwide.