The five-item Brief-Symptom Rating Scale as a suicide ideation screening instrument for psychiatric inpatients and community residents.
BACKGROUND
An efficient screening instrument which can be used in diverse settings to predict suicide in different populations is vital. The aim of this study was to use the five-item Brief Symptom Rating Scale (BSRS-5) as a screening instrument for the prediction of suicide ideation in psychiatric, community and general medical settings.


METHODS
Five hundred and one psychiatric, 1,040 community and 969 general medical participants were recruited. The community participants completed a structured telephone interview, and the other two groups completed the self-report BSRS-5 questionnaire.


RESULTS
The logistic regression analysis showed that the predictors of suicide ideation for the psychiatric group were depression, hostility and inferiority (p < 0.001, p = 0.016, p = 0.011), for the community group, inferiority, hostility and insomnia (p < 0.001, p < 0.001, p = 0.003), and for the general medical group, inferiority, hostility, depression and insomnia (p < 0.001, p = 0.001, p = 0.020, p = 0.008). The structural equation model showed the same symptom domains that predicted suicide ideation for all three groups. The receiver operating characteristic curve using the significant symptom domains from logistic regression showed that for the psychiatric group, the optimal cut-off point was 4/5 for the total of the significant dimensions (positive predictive value [PPV] = 78.01%, negative predictive value [NPV] = 79.05%), for the community group, 7/8 (PPV = 68.75%, NPV = 96.09%), and for the general medical group, 12/13 (PPV = 92.86%, NPV = 88.48%).


CONCLUSIONS
The BSRS-5 is an efficient tool for the screening of suicide ideation-prone psychiatric inpatients, general medical patients, and community residents. Understanding the discriminative symptom domains for different groups and the relationship between them can help health care professionals in their preventative programs and clinical treatment.
Lung
For-Wey
FW
Department of Psychiatry, Kaohsiung Armed Forces General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. forwey@seed.net.tw
Lee
Ming-Been
MB
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D015995:Prevalence; D012372:ROC Curve; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D012944:Social Support; D013406:Suicide, Attempted / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires