A Comparison of Personality Characteristics and Family Functioning of Suicidal Inpatients with Normal Persons

The purpose of this study was to compare the personality and family functioning variables of attempted suicide inpatients and normal controls. Therefore, 100 attempted suicide inpatients and 85 normal controls were randomly selected, and the Farsi versions of the short form of MMPI (Barahoni, Shamloo, & Nouparast, 1974) and the Family Assessment Device (FAD; Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983) were administered to them. Information about age, education, economic status, and other demographic variables were also gathered. lt was hypothesized that there would be significant differences between suicidal and normal controls with regard to all variables. The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed that the two groups were significantly different on the variables like hypochondrias. depression, hysteria, psychopathic, paranoia, psychastany, schizophrenia, mania, family problem solving. communication, family roles, affective involvement, behavior control, general functioning, education, and economic status. There was non significant difference in the mean scores of affective responsiveness subscale. The results of varimax component analysis showed that the two questionnaires were relatively independent but the subscales of each were interrelated. Further discriminant analysis showed that the best predictors of suicide attempt were: Education, psychopathy, economic status, family communication, affective responsiveness in family, and behavior control in family.