In 2020, 6319 people died of suicide in Great Britain. In Wales and England, suicide is the major cause of death in males among the age group of 20-34 years.
Research has shown a correlation to psychosocial crises and psychiatric disorders. The assessment of suicidality in psychiatric health care relies on the utterances of the patients, limiting the accuracy, as suicidality is a social taboo. Research has shown high levels of deception within psychiatric patients regarding the occurrence and severity of suicidality. Behaviour analysis (BA) attempts to reveal deceptive behaviour and make concealed behavioural patterns tangible.
The aim of this Literature Review is to investigate what opportunities and limitations BA offers when assessing suicidality in psychiatric health care. In all studies viewed, researchers linked the study’s variables (facial expressions etc.) to spoken words on suicidality and contextualized these.
Among other things, research revealed higher levels of perceived impulsivity, contempt, anger or disgust, as well as increased levels of activity in the mouth area, possibly linked to mood control efforts. Lower levels of eyebrow activity were found, hypothetically linked into emotional inhibition.
Limitations to these findings lie in the small number of participants of each study that to not allow for generalization, as well as the challenge of transfer and applicability of the findings to the field of assessing suicidality in psychiatric health care.
Nevertheless, adjusting and enhancing the assessment and therefore prevention of suicidality via tools that do not solely depend on interpersonal variables would have a great impact on the world’s health status.
