A comparison of life events between suicidal adolescents with major depression and borderline personality disorder
Section snippets
Population
Three groups of adolescents took part in the study: (1) a group of 20 adolescents who had made a first suicide attempt and were diagnosed as meeting DSM-IV criteria for MDD; (2) a group of 20 adolescents who had made a first suicide attempt and met DSM-IV criteria for BPD; and (3) a sex- and age-matched group of 20 adolescents who did not meet criteria for any psychiatric illness and had never made a suicide attempt during their lifetime. They were recruited from a high school in the clinic
Results
On analysis of variance (ANOVA) [F(2, 57) = 474.53, P < .001], the BDI significantly differentiated between the MDD group (52.91 ± 5.64), the BPD group (12.33 ± 4.58), and the controls (4.04 ± 6.09). A post hoc Scheffé test showed that the MDD group was higher than the BPD group (P < .05), which in turn was significantly higher than the control group (P < .05).
On ANOVA, SRS significantly distinguished between the groups [F(2, 57) = 366.21, P < .001] The SRS scores were not significantly
Limitations
The study is a retrospective one and conclusions must necessarily be correlational and not causal. The memory of the subjects may be misleading and life events may often be the result of behaviors and not the cause. Thus, life events may be both a result as well as a cause of psychiatric illness.33 Patients with a major depressive episode and BPD may tend to be more argumentative and irritable, especially at the time close to a suicide attempt and, thus, influence some of their life events. It
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