Am J Psychiatry 1981; 138:1120-1121
Copyright © 1981 by American Psychiatric Association
Suicide and the dexamethasone suppression test in unipolar depression
W Coryell and MA Schlesser
The authors studied 243 inpatients with unipolar depression who had
received DSTs. Of 205 patients with primary depression, the 4 who later
committed suicide were among 96 with abnormal DST results; 1 patients with
secondary depression committed suicide despite a normal DST result. The
authors suggest that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal dysfunction is
associated with a type of primary depressive illness that is more likely to
involve suicide than are other types.
