One hundred patients admitted consecutively to an inpatient psychiatric unit were given questionnaires to measure risk-taking propensity and depression. The purpose was to study the relationship between risk-taking, depression, and recent suicide attempts.
It was found that depressed patients showed a bimodal clustering towards the extremes of risk-taking. There was a history of suicide attempts only when a certain threshold of risk-taking was exceeded. These findings are discussed with relation to defensive styles of psychological adaptation and to arousal thresholds.
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