title: Temperament and character profiles of Japanese university student suicide completers.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aims of this study were to investigate the personality traits of suicide completers using the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) scale.
  
  
  METHODS
  Newly enrolled students who enrolled at Hokkaido University in 1999-2002 and 2004-2007 completed the TCI. Among these students, twenty subjects (2 females and 18 males) later completed suicide. We compared the TCI scales of these subjects with those of 60 (6 females and 54 males) well-matched controls. The controls were matched for age, gender, university department and year of enrollment in the university. Because the number of females was too small, the statistical analyses for the TCI subscales and logistic regression analysis were performed only with the 18 males.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A univariate analysis of seven personality dimensions on the TCI revealed higher scores of harm avoidance (HA) in subjects with suicide completion (P=0.034). Analysis of the male subjects showed that suicide completers had higher scores for anticipatory worry (HA1, P=0.007) and fear of uncertainty (HA2, P=0.036) and lower scores for spiritual acceptance (ST3, P=0.038) than did the controls. A multivariate analysis, which was performed to adjust confounding factors, demonstrated significantly higher scores for HA1 among suicide completers (P=0.01, OR=1.32).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results suggest that higher HA scores may predict suicide completion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan. nmitsui@med.hokudai.ac.jp
authors.forename: Nobuyuki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mitsui
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Asakura
authors.forename: Takeshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Inoue
authors.forename: Yusuke
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shimizu
authors.forename: Yutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fujii
authors.forename: Yuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kako
authors.forename: Teruaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: Nobuki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kitagawa
authors.forename: Ichiro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kusumi
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002605:Character; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*; D013694:Temperament; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult