AUTHOR=Gómez-Expósito Alexandra , Wolz Ines , Fagundo Ana B. , Granero Roser , Steward Trevor , Jiménez-Murcia Susana , Agüera Zaida , Fernández-Aranda Fernando 

TITLE=Correlates of Non-suicidal Self-Injury and Suicide Attempts in Bulimic Spectrum Disorders

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=7

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01244

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01244

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Objective:</bold> The aim of this study was to examine the implication of personality, impulsivity, and emotion regulation difficulties in patients with a bulimic-spectrum disorder (BSD) and suicide attempts (SA), BSD patients with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and BSD patients without these behaviors.</p><p><bold>Method:</bold> One hundred and twenty-two female adult BSD patients were assessed using self-report questionnaires. Patients were clustered <italic>post-hoc</italic> into three groups depending on whether they presented BSD without NSSI or SA (BSD), BSD with lifetime NSSI (BSD + NSSI) or BSD with lifetime SA (BSD + SA).</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> The BSD + NSSI and BSD + SA groups presented more emotion regulation difficulties, more eating and general psychopathology, and increased reward dependence in comparison with the BSD group. In addition, BSD + SA patients specifically showed problems with impulse control, while also presenting higher impulsivity than both the BSD and BSD + NSSI groups. No differences in impulsivity between the BSD and BSD + NSSI groups were found.</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> The results show that BSD + NSSI and BSD + SA share a common profile characterized by difficulties in emotion regulation and low reward dependence, but differ in impulsivity and cooperativeness. This suggests that self-injury, in patients without a history of suicide attempts (i.e., BSD + NSSI), may have a regulatory role rather than being due to impulsivity.</p>