Disturbance in decision making and suicide tendency

Abstract

The relation of suicidal risks and disturbance in decision making were the subject of the study. The total of 96 patients with endogenous mental disorders were involved in the study (45 subjects either having a suicidal attempt or declaring suicidal thoughts, and 51 subjects not having neither suicidal attempts no thoughts). The control group consisted of 90 healthy subjects. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was used. The Expectancy-valence model was employed for the result processing; the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). The ability of emotionally biased decision making was impaired in the group with suicidal risk in contrast to both the control group and the group without the suicidal risk. At the same time the group with suicidal risk featured better logical reasoning ability and was less inclined to stereotypes. It was shown that impaired ability of emotionally biased decision making in ambiguity leads to a compensatory shift towards the decisions based on formal logical reasoning.