Contemporary research demonstrates that suicidal thinking is heterogeneous in content, multi-modal in form, and dynamically variable across timescales. Advances in descriptive science have deepened our understanding of suicidal ideation, warranting a reconsideration of how desire-based cognitions are embedded in dominant models within the ideation-to-action framework. Across leading models within this framework, suicide capability is conceptualized as a distinct, acquired moderator that facilitates the transition from ideation to attempt but remains external to the phenomenology of ideation itself. We argue that this architecture is conceptually incomplete. Specifically, we distinguish between trait capability that is an acquired, relatively stable dispositional readiness, and state-perceived capability, defined as an episodic, context-sensitive appraisal of feasibility that can emerge during episodes of suicidal thinking. We further propose that when individuals report cognitions such as "I could actually do this," these appraisals of feasibility may become integrated into the phenomenology of some suicidal ideation episodes rather than operating as background moderators. Thus, indicating that capability-referent content may be phenomenologically embedded within suicidal thinking rather than independent from it. Such content is more consistent with dynamic fluctuations in state-perceived capability occurring within ideation episodes than with the operation of a stable, dispositional capability construct. We propose reconceptualising suicidal ideation as a multi-component state space comprising motivational content, suicidal imagery, temporal horizon, and state-perceived capability. This reframing has implications for measurement, risk modeling, and clinical practice, particularly in identifying action-proximal episodes that conventional risk severity metrics may fail to detect.
OBJECTIVE Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) commonly serves emotion-regulation and interpersonal functions. Although emotion recognition is integral to emotion regulation, speech emotion recognition (SER) in NSSI remains understudied. We examined SER and its associations with emotion dysregulation, NSSI severity, and suicidal ideation. METHODS Participants were 392 college students aged 18-25 years, including 296 with NSSI and 96 healthy controls. Recognition accuracy, confusion patterns, perceived intensity, and arousal were assessed across seven emotions and three stimulus types. Group differences were examined using aligned rank transform mixed-effects ANOVAs. Within the NSSI group, sparse partial least squares regression examined multivariate associations between 63 SER features and five dimensions of emotion-regulation difficulties. Partial correlations were conducted to examine the clinical relevance of the sPLS-derived profiles to NSSI severity and suicidal ideation. RESULTS The groups did not differ in recognition accuracy or global confusion patterns. The NSSI group reported higher arousal across all emotion categories. One significant sPLS component explained 27.7% of the covariance between SER and emotion-regulation features. Fear and anger intensity and arousal and disgust-to-neutral misclassification contributed most strongly to the SER profile, which was associated with all five emotion-regulation dimensions. After adjustment, the emotion-regulation component remained associated with suicidal ideation but not NSSI severity, whereas the SER component was not directly associated with either outcome. CONCLUSIONS NSSI was characterized by heightened emotional reactivity rather than generalized emotion-recognition impairment. SER-related responses to fear and anger were associated with broad emotion-regulation difficulties, which were further related to suicidal ideation.
OBJECTIVE Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among adolescents. Given that most youth interact with healthcare system providers in the month preceding a suicide attempt, rapid and effective suicide screening tools are critically needed. The Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) is a brief, evidence-based instrument specifically designed for the quick identification of adolescents at elevated suicide risk in time-critical and high-stress settings, such as Emergency Departments. This study aimed to conduct a preliminary validation of the Hebrew translation of the ASQ questionnaire, enabling its use as a rapid and evidence-based suicide-screening tool among Hebrew-speaking adolescents. METHOD A total of 20 adolescents aged 10 to 18 participated in this study. A randomized, cross-over design was employed to assess the concordance between the original English version of the ASQ and its Hebrew translation. The two versions were administered in counterbalanced order, with an approximately two-day interval between administrations. RESULTS Translation reliability between the English and Hebrew ASQ versions was extremely high, with 99% identical responses across all items. Four items showed perfect agreement, and the remaining item demonstrated near-perfect concordance. CONCLUSIONS These findings support the strong reliability of the Hebrew translation.
