ENGIMA-STB aims to identify neurobiological variations associated with suicidal ideations and behaviors, to ultimately leverage information from brain structure, function, along with clinical and demographic factors, to predict the likelihood of a future suicidal attempt. Credit: USC Stevens INI
Key Points:
- An interdisciplinary working group brought together data from 21 international studies to get a better look at mood disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
- The researchers found subtle alterations in the size of the frontal pole in youth with suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
- The data could provide important targets for the next generation of more effective suicide prevention strategies.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the United States for young people from the age of 10 up to 33. An interdisciplinary working group with the ENIGMA Consortium is working to advance understanding of the complex nature of suicidal thoughts and behaviors to ultimately develop better interventions and preventions.
Their new study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, has revealed subtle alterations in the size of the brain’s prefrontal region in young people with mood disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The key to the study was combining data from 21 international, interdisciplinary studies.
Benefitting from that large dataset, the researchers performed analyses on multiple subsamples. They started with data from a smaller group of young people with mood disorders for whom very detailed information about suicide was available. Next, they examined larger and more diverse samples in terms of type of diagnosis and the instruments used to assess suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
According to the study results, the team detected subtle alterations in the size of the frontal pole—a prefrontal region—in the first sample of young people, suggesting that these associations may be absent or more difficult to identify in more diverse samples.
“The structural brain differences that we found were very subtle, which means that most people with a history of suicidal behaviors have brains that are not very different from people without a history of suicidal behaviors, which is reassuring,” said first author Laura van Velzen, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne. “However, the subtle differences that we found do provide us with a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in suicidal behaviors and may eventually provide important targets for the next generation of more effective suicide prevention strategies.”
Equipped with these results, the research team is calling attention to the pressing need for more studies of this scope. Ongoing work by the same group will include expanded analysis, with the goal of including additional age groups and exploring other features, such as brain connectivity.
Information courtesy of USC.