Predictors of Suicidal Behavior Found In Blood

ananyo writes "Researchers may have found a way to potentially predict suicidal behaviour by analyzing someone's blood. Using blood samples taken by the coroner from nine men who had committed suicide, they found six molecular signs, or biomarkers, that they say can identify people at risk of committing suicide. To check whether these biomarkers could predict hospitalizations related to suicide or suicide attempts, the researchers analysed gene-expression data from 42 men with bipolar disorder and 46 men with schizophrenia. When the biomarkers were combined with clinical measures of mood and mental state, the accuracy with which researchers could predict hospitalizations was more than 80% (abstract)."

Comments

STAY OFF MY LAWN

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to live in a world that will prevent me from committing suicide.

Re:STAY OFF MY LAWN

[ColdWetDog]

I'll bet you get invited to all of the Christmas parties.

I disagree

[schneidafunk]

I have a family member whom has mental health issues and she was suicidal for a good year in her early 20s, until she got on the right medication. Now she lives a productive life and is happy. Some mental issues can be solved with medication!

Re:I disagree

[oodaloop]

It's a shame the proper use of who vs whom can't.

Re:I disagree

[ebno-10db]

Who vs. whom, what are you, British? While you're at it, why not complain using "you" instead of having the separate subject and object forms, thou and thee. Sorry, but subject/object forms in English have been dying for around 1000 years. It ain't German anymore. It's become an analytic rather than a synthetic language.

P.S. Couldn't help myself. Nothing more fun than outdoing the pedantry of someone else.

P.P.S. Next time let's discuss the singular "they", and how it was absurd to try and impose Latin rules on English.

Re:I disagree

[ebno-10db]

To whom are you addressing that remark?

Re:I disagree

[Bigbutt]

You have to realize that suicidal for woman is more of a call for help. Women tend to use methods that permit escape or discovery before death. Suicidal for men is more time to go, where's my gun?

Statistically woman attempt suicide more often than men. But men die at a much higher rate.

[John]

Re:I disagree

[Jeremy Erwin]

Imagine having to make a rational decision as to the benefits and costs of continued existence, Most people, aside from the very aged and the very depressed would value continued existence quite highly. Now imagine that you were suffering from a mental condition that exaggerated the costs, and downplayed the benefits, such that every day you took time out of your life to seriously contemplate this otherwise laughable dilemma. What if the only thing preventing the suicide was logistical? What if you worried about how hard it would for someone to find your body and clean up the blood and brains? Is that sort of concern really a sign of a healthy mind?

"My life is worthless, but I don't want to be a bother?"

Re:I disagree

[cellocgw]

Can someone explain to me why "try and" seems to have become so popular? It makes no logical sense as a replacement for "try to", and appears to be favored over the latter for purely euphonic reasons.

OTOH, if your logic tree isn't getting the results you expected, delete an OR and....

try AND

. //rimshot

Re:I disagree

[geekoid]

The Magnetic Therapies used as actual treatments are extremely powerful, and specifically target devices.
However, the data is still weak, and Neuropsychopharmacology did a great break down on the FDA post hoc reasoning.

The shit you where on your wrist or in your shoe have no effect.

Re:I disagree

[ebno-10db]

OK, since this is the pedantic thread, they can make sense, but have to mean something different than the literal meaning.

Nope. See definitions 1 and 3: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiom

Sounds like more eugenics propaganda

[s.petry]

The list of eugenics propaganda is getting longer, and I'll have to study this to determine if it needs to go there. On a hunch, I'm guessing that it will. I'm not a MD, but wonder if this is even possible due to toxins the body produces right after death as well as another more obvious reason. Suicide is generally a result of depression as well as other symptoms. The obvious reason for this to fail is that currently there is no way (nor should there be) to test someones blood to determine if they are suffering from depression. They could of course determine levels of substances, but humans are adaptive and can live with a huge tolerance or lack of certain hormones, amino acids, etc...

Now maybe it's just me, but the summary seems extremely familiar to "Detecting mental illness by analyzing your tweets", and "Detecting mental illness by analyzing your social media habits" which we have seen within the last year and a half. This one is a bit better disguised, but not disguised enough.

Re:Sounds like more eugenics propaganda

[s.petry]

The attempt to find molecular basis I have disputed for two reasons. I'm sure an MD can do a better job of it, and I will be discussing this issue with friends and become more familiar with it.

Psychiatric diseases and diagnosis have become nearly laughable. The bible used to determine a diagnosis has been the subject of controversy since it was first published, and has grown more controversial in the last 2 revisions. If you are not questioning an industry where children are diagnosed as mentally ill and put on medication because they want to play, you are a fool.

Don't make the mistake of putting words into my mouth. I believe that some mental illnesses are real, some are treatable, some are not. That said, an industry that attempts to medicate normal people for doing normal things and diagnose them as "ill" doing as much service to humanity as the witch doctor pulling evil spirits out of people.

How to get a blood sample

[Russ1642]

We need a blood sample to test for suicidal tendencies. Could you make a small cut in your wrist please?

Suicide marker?

[LoRdTAW]

Maybe this is perhaps a sign of severe depression rather than simply suicide. I read the article and depression wasn't mentioned until the end and only briefly. Happy people don't kill themselves.

Re:Suicide marker?

[Darkness404]

Happy people don't kill themselves.

I disagree. While undoubtedly the vast majority of suicides are due to severe depression and unhappy people, there are a number of other reasons why people commit suicide. For some, they want to go out with dignity. Others have a debilitating illness and want to be in their right mind when they die rather than die unable to even recognize their own children.

Now that doesn't mean that suicide is the answer or that I condone suicide or anything, merely that there are some people who commit suicide without being really unhappy.

Some work to do

[Rob the Bold]

As the researcher admits:

The next step, he says, is to look at the levels of these biomarkers in the general population and in other at-risk populations, such as those with depression or suffering from stress or bereavement. “Suicide is not just related to mental illness,” he says. “It’s a very complex behaviour (sic*).”

That might just be an understatement, there. Generalizing results to the population as a whole, as opposed to people with known disorders that already predispose them to a higher risk of suicide (and other behavior-related premature mortality) would be the interesting part if it worked.

*Yes, I know that "behaviour" is the correct spelling in British English, but since I'm writing this in the US, I feel obligated to note that I am not misspelling it in my version of written language. It's my way of honoring The Economist magazine's editorial policy, in reverse, that is.

Re:Hmmm...

[Samantha Wright]

They were on a wide range of drugs, I'm afraid; it's in the supplementary notes. The group of people they were studying (bipolar disorder patients) are pretty high-risk, medication or no.