Objectives: Analysis of associations between symptoms reported before the beginning of the hospitalization and reduction of suicidal ideation - or its lack - obtained until the end of the hospitalization in patients of the day hospital for the treatment of neurotic and behavioral disorders.
Methods: Symptoms Checklist KO"O" and Life Inventory completed by 461 women and 219 men treated with intensive integrative psychotherapy with predominance of psychodynamic approach in the day hospital due to neurotic, behavioral and personality disorders between 2005-2013. Percentages of patients reporting SI initially and at the end of the treatment were 29.1% and 10.2% respectively in women and 36.5% and 13.7% in men. The improvement in terms of initially reported SI was obtained by 84.3% of women and 77.5% of men. Among patients, those initially reporting SI were characterized by greater intensity of neurotic symptoms (p<0.001) and greater intensity of nearly all of 14 subtypes of neurotic symptoms(p<0.05).
Results: Among those reporting SI, subgroups of women with greater intensity of Obsessive-compulsive symptoms (p=0.003), Neurasthenia (p=0.005), Autonomic disorders (p=0.044) and women reporting episodes of uncontrollable hunger (p<0.01) had significantly lower chances of improvement in terms of SI than others.
Conclusions: Patients initially reporting SI constituted approximately 1/3 in both genders and were characterized by greater intensity of neurotic disorders. Among those, women with particularly higher intensity of Obsessive-compulsive symptoms, Neurasthenia and Autonomic disorders and women reporting episodes of uncontrollable hunger seemed to suffer from SI that were more resistant to the psychotherapy. As such, those subgroups of women require special attention and diligent selection of the therapeutic methods.
Keywords: neurotic symptoms; psychotherapy; suicidal ideations.