Does gender-specific suicidal symptomatology exist? Initial work on a partially-novel, multi-questionnaire-based characterization of acute suicidal patients
COGENT PSYCHOLOGY(2024)
Abstract
Scientific literature suggests more women to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) yet more men to commit suicide. Thus, distinct gender-specific symptoms may exist allowing prototypical male depression to evade social and medical detection until it is too late. This study aimed at characterizing gender differences based on self-rating questionnaires in male and female patients with acute suicidal ideations (n = 28; 12 female patients) committed to a local district hospital in Bavaria, Germany from 2021 to 2023. While these patients reported significantly augmented symptoms in the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), the Gender-Specific Depression Screening (GSDS), the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI-II), and the Impulsive Behavior Short Scale-8 (I-8) compared to healthy controls (n = 30; 14 female controls), gender-based differences within the group remained surprisingly scarce. Surprisingly, the GSDS failed to differentiate gender-specific symptoms (ie male-specific depressive symptoms). Suicidal women, however, reported a heightened anger trait and outward directed anger expression (STAXI-II), as well as prominent sensation seeking and urgency (I-8) than suicidal men; symptoms that are viewed as typically male. Conversely, suicidal men primarily expressed inwardly directed anger (ie self-hate; STAXI-II). There is no evidence for self-reported, presumably gender-specific symptomatology in the investigated suicidal mixed-gender patient population.
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Key words
Gender,depression,suicidality,aggression,impulsivity,anger
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