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Investigating the phenotypic and genetic associations between personality traits and suicidal behavior across major mental health diagnoses.

European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience

Authors: Janos L Kalman, Tomoya Yoshida, Till F M Andlauer, Eva C Schulte, Kristina Adorjan, Martin Alda, Raffaela Ardau, Jean-Michel Aubry, Katharina Brosch, Monika Budde, Caterina Chillotti, Piotr M Czerski, Raymond J DePaulo, Andreas Forstner, Fernando S Goes, Maria Grigoroiu-Serbanescu, Paul Grof, Dominik Grotegerd, Tim Hahn, Maria Heilbronner, Roland Hasler, Urs Heilbronner, Stefanie Heilmann-Heimbach, Pawel Kapelski, Tadafumi Kato, Mojtaba Oraki Kohshour, Susanne Meinert, Tina Meller, Igor Nenadić, Markus M Nöthen, Tomas Novak, Nils Opel, Joanna Pawlak, Julia-Katharina Pfarr, James B Potash, Daniela Reich-Erkelenz, Jonathan Repple, Hélène Richard-Lepouriel, Marcella Rietschel, Kai G Ringwald, Guy Rouleau, Sabrina Schaupp, Fanny Senner, Giovanni Severino, Alessio Squassina, Frederike Stein, Pavla Stopkova, Fabian Streit, Katharina Thiel, Florian Thomas-Odenthal, Gustavo Turecki, Joanna Twarowska-Hauser, Alexandra Winter, Peter P Zandi, John R Kelsoe, Peter Falkai, Udo Dannlowski, Tilo Kircher, Thomas G Schulze, Sergi Papiol

Personality traits influence risk for suicidal behavior. We examined phenotype- and genotype-level associations between the Big Five personality traits and suicidal ideation and attempt in major depressive, bipolar and schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia patients (N = 3012) using fixed- and random-effects inverse variance-weighted meta-analyses. Suicidal ideations were more likely to be reported by patients with higher neuroticism and lower extraversion phenotypic scores, but showed no significant association with polygenic load for these personality traits. Our findings provide new insights into the association between personality and suicidal behavior across mental illnesses and suggest that the genetic component of personality traits is unlikely to have strong causal effects on suicidal behavior.

© 2022. The Author(s).

PMID: 35146571

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