Negative Automatic Thought and Suicidal Risk of Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

          The purpose of this descriptive research study was to explore the relationship between the negative automatic thought and suicidal risk of psychiatric patients. The study samples were psychiatric patients admitted at the inpatient ward in Khon Kaen Rajanagarindra Psychiatric hospital from March to June, 2019. Sixty psychiatric patients were selected by specific criteria and purposive sampling. The research tools were the personal data questionnaire, the negative automatic thought (NAT) and the mini international neuropsychiatric interview (M.I.N.I.). Data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.

          The results of the study found that most of samples were males (75.0%), Their average age was 37.65 year (S.D. = 7.94), Most of them has single status (53.3%), education level of primary school (48.3%), agriculture and slf–enployed of career (60.0%), They urer diagnosed as psychosis and schizophrenia (41.7%), and depressive dipressive (38.3%), They experienced the moderate (33.3%) and severe (66.7%) levels of suicidal risks. There was a moderate positive correlation of negative automatic thought with the moderate and severe level of suicidal risk (r = 0.627, p < 0.01)

           This study suggests that there should be a specific design of therapy to the negative autonomic characteristics of each patient that lead to suicidal risk.

          Keywords: Negative automatic thought, Suicidal risks, Psychiatric patients