Development of Interview Form to Estimate the Risk of Self‐Destructive Behaviors

Abstract

The authors devised the interview form, Schedule of Self‐Destructive Risks (SOS‐DR), for the estimation of risks of self‐destructive behaviors, and developed the subscale of SOS‐DR especially to estimate hopelessness as a potential risk to suicide. SOS‐DR had a favorable inter‐rater reliability shown by Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Kuder‐Richardson's alpha coefficient. On the basis of correlations of items in SOS‐DR with Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) in 52 patients, 18 items were selected and named SOS‐18. SOS‐18 had favorable concurrent and discriminant validities as shown by correlating significantly with the BHS score but not with the score of Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) from which items common to SOS‐18 were eliminated. Therefore, SOS‐18 was considered to be a reliable indicator of hopelessness as a suicidal risk.

Hopelessness in a community population in Japan

“…The term equivalent to hopelessness in Japanese, "zetsubokan," is a fairly common word and is often used in everyday conversation. Studying 52 Japanese psychiatric patients, Ono, Murai, Yasuda, Nakamura, & Nakajima (1994) found that hopelessness was associated with suicidal tendency as well as depression. Despite these considerations, we are not aware of any investigations which studied hopelessness among a community population in Japan.…”