(PS9-D83) Personality Profiles, Putative Suicide-mechanisms, and Suicidality: First Steps in Personalized Suicide Interventions

In line with NIMH’s RDoC initiative, focusing on transdiagnostic, shared mechanisms that contribute to the onset and maintenance of both mental health disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) may represent a more potent and parsimonious approach to care. Recently, models of psychopathology have been developed that emphasize a limited number of transdiagnostic mechanisms. The higher-order mechanisms in these models bear a strong resemblance to the well-known Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality: neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness. In addition to robust findings linking FFM domains to specific mental health disorders (e.g., neuroticism is associated with anxiety disorders, [low] conscientiousness is associated with substance use disorders), high levels of neuroticism and low levels of extraversion have been associated with suicidal ideation, whereas low levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness been linked to higher suicide rates. Moreover, proposed models of suicide risk (e.g., Joiner’s Interpersonal Theory) can also be accounted for by dimensions of the FFM. Thus, a more parsimonious approach to treating co-occurring mental health conditions and the STBs that may arise in their context may be to directly target dimensions of the FFM; there is growing research that FFM dimensions can be engaged in treatment and improvement on these personality domains is associated downstream effects of psychopathology. As such, the next steps are to determine which component of personality, if treated successfully, could decrease suicidality. The current study sought to examine whether personality profiles moderate the relationship between putative suicide mechanisms (i.e., hopelessness, perceived burdensomeness [PB], thwarted belongingness [TB]) and suicidality. Between March 10 and April 15, 2022, a nationwide sample of 1,351 adults completed questionnaires concerned with personality, suicidality, and putative suicide mechanisms. A latent profile analysis (LPA) yielded six personality profiles from the data: (1) moderately high neuroticism; (2) low openness and moderately low extraversion and agreeableness; (3) moderately high conscientiousness and moderately low neuroticism; (4) low agreeableness and openness; (5) high extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness and low neuroticism; and (6) low conscientiousness and moderately high neuroticism. Results of a series of one-way ANOVAs indicated that there were significant differences in PB (F[5, 413.02] = 163.75, p < .001), TB (F[5, 317.89] = 134.54, p < .001), hopelessness (F[5, 350.05] = 167.28, p < .001), and suicidality (F[5, 39.70, p < .001) across the six personality profiles. There were no significant interactions between PB (ps = .409 to .728) or TB(ps = .072 to .200) or hopelessness (ps = .095 to .578), and personality profile in predicting suicidality. In summary, the LPA yielded six distinct personality profiles. These profiles were associated with differing levels of PB, TB, hopelessness, and suicidality. However, these profiles did not moderate the relationship between these putative suicide mechanisms and suicidality. The results and implications will be discussed.