Investigating the phenotypic and genetic associations between personality traits and suicidal behavior across major mental health diagnoses

Abstract

Personality traits influence risk for suicidal behavior. We examined phenotype- and genotype-level associations between the Big Five personality traits and suicidal ideation and attempt in major depressive, bipolar and schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia patients (N = 3012) using fixed- and random-effects inverse variance-weighted meta-analyses. Suicidal ideations were more likely to be reported by patients with higher neuroticism and lower extraversion phenotypic scores, but showed no significant association with polygenic load for these personality traits. Our findings provide new insights into the association between personality and suicidal behavior across mental illnesses and suggest that the genetic component of personality traits is unlikely to have strong causal effects on suicidal behavior.

Completed suicide is associated with a higher polygenic burden for psychiatric disorders

“…The study of Buoli et al [3] in this issue provides a good example of such evidence, showing the relevance of several clinical variables in the lifetime suicide attempts in patients affected by bipolar disorder (BD). Likewise, increasing evidence indicates that personality traits like neuroticism or extraversion may influence SB [4]. However, as pointed out by Nishanth and Jha [5] in this issue, little is known about the biological/ neural basis of SB.…”

“…Written consent was obtained for all the samples, and the study was approved by the different ethical committees at the centers involved in the recruitment. All steps involving quality control and imputation of the samples were carried out as described elsewhere [4].…”