Idiographic Dynamics between Suicide Ideation and Depression, Anxiety and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Persons Living with HIV: A Pilot Study

Background: Given that suicide ideation (SI) fluctuates drastically over short periods of time and is heterogenous across individuals, idiographic suicide research is warranted. In this pilot study, we used intensive ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine whether anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms on a given day predicted next-day SI on a person-to-person basis. Methods: PLWH (N = 10) with past-month SI completed daily randomly assessed ratings of suicidal urges using the Suicide-Visual Analogue Scale (S-VAS) and daily assessed ratings of anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms for 28 days. We used N = 1 Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling to test whether depression, anxiety or PTSD symptoms in the prior day predicted next-day S-VAS for each individual. Results: Across all participants, S-VAS on a given day was not predicted by prior-day anxiety, PTSD symptoms or S-VAS. In one participant, higher depression symptoms predicted lower next-day S-VAS. Conclusions: Daily-level data may be insufficient to predict near-term increases in suicide risk based on anxiety, depression, or PTSD symptoms in PLWH. These findings suggest the importance of finer-grained assessments (e.g., assessing suicide risk and its correlates multiple times per day) to better understand changes in suicide risk over time among PLWH.