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Mental pain and suicide risk: implications for neuroimaging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2023

M. Pompili
M. Pompili*
Affiliation:
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Abstract

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Abstract

Campaigns have been launched to make sense of what makes a specific individual suicidal. We know that suicidal individuals give definite warning signs, mainly from their ambivalence about ending their own lives. Classical suicidology posited that the suicidal individual experiences unbearable psychological pain (psychache) or suffering and that suicide might be, at least in part, an attempt to escape from this suffering, emphasizing that suicide is not a movement toward death but rather an escape from unbearable emotion and unendurable or unacceptable anguish. Suicide occurs when that individual deems the psychache to be unbearable. Neuroimaging studies demonstrated that such emotional pain shares the same neuroanatomical circuit of somatic pain. Furthermore, concepts related to death, failure, or other unfortunate circumstances activate specific cerebral areas in a suicidal individual compared to a non-suicidal subject. The author conducted a sizeable clinical investigation on mental pain related to psychiatric disorders and suicide risk. Implications for further research are discussed during the presentation.

Disclosure of Interest

M. Pompili Consultant of: Janssen, Lundbeck, Recordati, MSD, Speakers bureau of: Janssen, Lundbeck, Angelini Pharma, Pfizer

Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 66 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 31st European Congress of Psychiatry , March 2023 , pp. S36
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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