The relationship between disgust and suicidal behavior

Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2022-06-09

Xiao Tingwei DONG Jie LIANG Fei WANG Fushun LI Yang

Abstract：

The death number caused by suicide is increasing, but the psychological mechanism of suicide is not clear. Recent studies have found that disgust might be the major emotional factor leading to suicide, or the reason for people to commit suicide is due to self-disgust. Disgust is a kind of basic emotion that is induced by excreta from oneself or other people. Disgust works to keep the individual away from toxicity and disease, which can be called "immune behavior". Recently, it is found that many psychological problems are resulted from the disgust reactions to surrounding people or environment. Some studies have shown that individuals who commit suicide are very disgustful for themselves, indicating that their disgust emotion is problematic.  Just as somatic autoimmunity attacks itself, disgust might lead to attacking behaviors against oneself or suicide. Self-disgust is the key factor of suicidal ideation, and early trauma is the root cause. Life stress and mental illness are involved in that disgust induced suicidal ideation. The neural basis of suicide induced by disgust is related to HPA axis and serotonin system. Future studies might apply neuroscience technologies, such as neuroimaging and electrophysiology, to examine the neural mechanism of suicidal behavior, and to explore the psychological and neural mechanisms of disgust affecting suicidal behaviors.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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