PERSONALITY-DISORDERS AND COMPLETED SUICIDE - A METHODOLOGICAL AND CONCEPTUAL REVIEW

Case-based and cohort studies on personality disorders (PD) and comple ted suicide are reviewed. Approximately 30-40% of suicides are committ ed by individuals with PD; borderline, antisocial, and possibly avoida nt and schizoid PD increase risk. Although longitudinal, or cohort, de signs are increasingly popular in psychopathology research, they have tended to yield smalt, nonrepresentative samples of suicides. Moreover , case-based studies have identified putative risk factors that cohort studies have overlooked. Only the case-control design can identify ri sk factors in a representative sample of suicides. Ideally, future use of that design would examine more rigorously whether avoidant PD, sch izoid PD, and unusual combinations of personality traits increase suic ide risk.