Using a Battery of Tests to Predict Suicide in a Long Term Hospital: A Clinical Analysis

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Abstract
The Wechsler-Bellevue, Rorschach, TAT and Word-Association Test of forty patients were examined for clinical indications of their suicide potential. Ten of these patients had completed suicide, ten had made serious attempts, ten had made mild attempts, and ten had never made a suicide attempt. On the basis of a blind psychoanalytically informed clinical interpretation of the protocols, the outcomes of these protocols were successfully predicted for 85 per cent of the cases. Also anticipated were the circumstances and motivations which would precipitate the suicidal crisis. The clinical inference principles used in the study are discussed and a case example of their application is provided. The results were judged much more clinically useful than the quantitative analysis performed on these data and reported elsewhere.

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