Elektrodermale Reaktivität bei Suizidversuch und Suizid Depressiver

Valid electrodermal hyporeactivity for depressive suicidal propensity offers links to cognitive theory

“…Publications concerning ‘electrodermal activity’, ‘suicide’, ‘suicide attempt’ and ‘depression’ were searched in PubMed and PsychINFO and through references from 66 known publications within the field of electrodermal activity in depression since 1890. There were 31 available reports in electrodermal suicidology (3–31).…”

“…Those reports were selected in a first step that addressed the habituation of the electrodermal response to simple tone stimuli in depressed patients. Excluding on the present issue less focused and closely interrelated reports as a second step, ten studies from 1986 to 2007 remained (3–12) and described in Tables 1–2.…”

“…As the German reports were based on a growing material, unknown numbers of patients were most probably included in more than one of those reports. Therefore, as the third step of data extraction, the materials were used from the German studies reporting hyporeactivity/reactivity dichotomizations from unique subjects that also comprise the largest groups of suicides (9), and of suicide attempts (10).…”

“…Subjects from tables and figures from the two Swedish studies (3, 4) and from the two by selection non‐overlapping German materials (9, 10) were extracted (Table 1, column a) for meta‐analysis and joined into the meta‐material which comprised 279 depressed patients and 59 healthy subjects, i.e. 338 subjects (Table 1).…”

“…Two independent Swedish studies (3, 4) found that electrodermal hyporeactivity was related to the occurrence of suicide or suicide attempt, particularly in depressed patients (4). These studies were followed by a series of publications on electrodermal reactivity and suicidal behavior (5–11) by the German group around Wolfersdorf and Straub from an over many years consecutively growing, highly valuable material that in 2006 had grown to more than 650 depressive patients (12). The statistical significance of the relationship between electrodermal hyporeactivity and the occurrence of suicide or suicide attempt has, however, varied widely, from being non‐significant (6, 7, 10), significant (5, 8, 9) to highly significant (4, 11, see Fig.…”