Tony T. Wells

The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide posits that interpersonal factors, specifically perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, increase suicidal ideation. Many modern social interactions take place over social media and, as such, examining social media content may offer a novel way to assess interpersonal relationships. In this preregistered study of 386 young adults, we examined the relationship between the amount of interaction with friends- and whether or not individuals interacted with family-related Instagram content and perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, and suicidal ideation. Instagram content was assessed via self-report and participants’ Instagram profiles. Participants who endorsed interacting with family on Instagram demonstrated lower thwarted belongingness and suicidal ideation, but not perceived burdensomeness. Non-preregistered analyses of friend Instagram content demonstrated similar results. Consistent with the Interpersonal Theory, participants’ interaction with family and frequency of interacting with friends on Instagram was associated with interpersonal variables and suicidal ideation but not aspects of acquired capability. Our study suggests that social media-based measures of interpersonal relationships are relevant to suicidality.

Objective: Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. There are several important decisions that could confer later risk to a suicide attempt (e.g., how to store lethal means). Therefore, understanding how people make decisions that are relevant for suicide risk is an important area of study for suicidology. Human behavior diverges from perfectly rational economic decision making according to observable patterns based on predictable cognitive processes. Nudges attempt to diminish, leverage. or circumvent these deviations to increase the probability of a desired choice being selected or behavior being performed. One deviation from rationality is that human choice is context dependent. This deviation can be observed by introducing an objectively inferior alternative option (a decoy) into a choice array that alters an individual's preference. Using decoys could be one way to nudge people toward best practices in suicide prevention work. Method: This study examined if decoys could reliably alter participant preferences for suicide prevention resources using a hypothetical scenario in three separate online samples (i.e., general population. participants with recent suicidal thoughts. gun owners). Results: Our results found that introducing a slightly (but objectively) worse version of an existing suicide prevention resource increased the preference toward the slightly better option. Conclusions: These findings indicate that using decoys could be an effective nudge for influencing people's preference toward best practices. Most important, these findings highlight the importance of context effects on choice preference in suicide research and prevention efforts, as well as suggest irrational decision-making processes in suicide-relevant decision making.

Failure to inhibit attention to irrelevant affective information has been linked to depression and rumination. However, few studies have investigated the biological bases of this process. Variation in the HOMER1 gene was identified in a genome-wide association study as associated with major depressive disorder and is associated with executive functioning inefficiency. Several studies have linked variation in the BDNF gene with emotional and cognitive processes such as rumination. The current study examined the association between these two auspicious genetic variants and inhibition of attention for affective information. In Study 1, 60 psychiatrically healthy community participants completed a negative affective priming task with positive and negative words. HOMER1 variation, but not BDNF variation, was associated with difficulty inhibiting irrelevant negative information. These results were replicated in a second study utilizing a sample of 97 psychiatrically healthy young adults. Implications for the current literature and future directions are discussed.

Genetic variation within the serotonin system has been associated with biased attention for affective stimuli and, less consistently, with vulnerability fo

ObjectiveAcute administration of antidepressant medication increases emotional information processing for positive information in both depressed and healthy persons. This effect is likely relevant ...

Models of depression vulnerability posit that negative early experiences, such as exposure to childhood abuse (CA), increase vulnerability to depression later in life. Though most victims of CA do not go on to develop depression, the question remains as to whether these individuals retain cognitive ‘scars’ that may contribute to depression vulnerability. The present study examined the relationship between self-reported, retrospective CA and cognitive vulnerability to depression in a carefully selected sample of young adults without current or past psychopathology. We measured cognitive vulnerability with both a self-report questionnaire, the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS), and a measure of information processing bias, the Scrambled Sentences Test (SST). Self-reported severity of CA was associated with increased cognitive vulnerability to depression on both the DAS and SST. Vulnerability to depression as measured by the SST, but not by the DAS, prospectively predicted increases in depressive symptoms over a 6-month period. Scores on the SST also interacted with CA to predict increases in depressive symptoms. These findings demonstrate the pernicious effects of CA even in those without current or past psychopathology.

Information processing biases are hallmark features of major depressive disorder (MDD). Depressed individuals display biased memory and attention for negative material. Given that memory is highly dependent on attention for initial encoding, understanding the interplay of these processes may provide important insight into mechanisms that produce memory biases in depression. In particular, attentional control—the ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information by both inhibiting the processing of irrelevant information and disengaging attention from irrelevant material—may be one area of impairment in MDD. In the current study, clinically depressed (MDD: n = 15) and never depressed (non-MDD: n = 22) participants' line of visual gaze was assessed while participants viewed positive and negative word pairs. For each word pair, participants were instructed to attend to one word (target) and ignore one word (distracter). Free recall of study stimuli was then assessed. Depressed individuals displayed greater recall of negatively valenced target words following the task. Although there were no group differences in attentional control in the context of negative words, attention to negative targets mediated the relationship between depression status and recall of negative words. Results suggest a stronger link between attention and memory for negative material in MDD.