Suicide and the dexamethasone suppression test in unipolar depression

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Abstract
The authors studied 243 inpatients with unipolar depression who had received DSTs. Of 205 patients with primary depression, the 4 who later committed suicide were among 96 with abnormal DST results; 1 patients with secondary depression committed suicide despite a normal DST result. The authors suggest that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal dysfunction is associated with a type of primary depressive illness that is more likely to involve suicide than are other types.