2 - (SYM 19) Text Descriptions and Appraisals of Body Sensations and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors

Background: Suicide is a leading cause of death. Much of the prior work on suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) has focused on thoughts, behaviors, and emotions in interpersonal contexts; however, much less has focused on intrapersonal experiences of specific body sensations during STBs. Understanding body sensations during STBs may help to clarify their phenomenology, expand knowledge of STBs beyond interpersonal contexts and canonical emotion categories, and improve STB treatment targets. Here we examine descriptions and appraisals of body sensations in people with and without STBs. We hypothesized that people with STBs would appraise their body sensations more negatively and describe body sensations using language related to negative affect, pain, and numbness/emptiness.

Methods:  We evaluated STBs, psychopathology, and body sensation descriptions in two online samples (Sample 1: N = 132; Sample 2: N = 450) selected for varied psychopathology symptoms and STBs. We used logistic regressions in R and scattertext in Python, which indicates which words were more likely to be used by people with STBs. Preliminary, preregistered analyses are presented; longitudinal data and lexicon-based text analyses are anticipated by November 2024.

Results: People with recent suicidal ideation reported experiencing more negative (Sample 1: β = -0.67, p = .001, OR = 0.79; Sample 2: β = -0.45, p < .001, OR = 0.64) and more intense body sensations (Sample 1: β = 0.42, p = .03, OR = 1.28; Sample 2: β = 0.41, p < .001, OR = 1.51) compared to those without. People with recent suicidal thinking were more likely to use words that indicate intensity or frequency (e.g., extremely, every), increased discomfort (e.g., clammy, knot), and lack of expected feelings (e.g., numb, numbness) compared to those without. 

People with recent suicidal ideation also reported experiencing more negative (Sample 1: β = -0.69, p < .001; Sample 2: β = -0.67, p < .001) and more intense body sensations (Sample 1: β = 0.91, p < .001; Sample 2: β = 0.76, p < .001) during recent suicidal ideation than during the study. People with suicidal thinking were more likely to use words related to thinking (e.g., mind, racing, thought), unpleasant body sensations (e.g., pounding, sinking), and emptiness (e.g., emptiness, empty) to describe body sensations during past suicidal thinking compared to during the study.

Conclusions: We found that people with STBs described their body sensations as involving increased discomfort or the absence of expected body sensations (e.g., numb, empty).