Risk factors for patients experiencing suicidal thoughts are fairly well established, such as significant mood disorders, severe anxiety disorders or abuse of various psychoactive substances (e.g. alcohol). However, knowing that a patient is burdened by any of these factors, one can only suspect that they may be struggling with thoughts of their own death. Researchers from American entities - Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh - decided to see if it was possible to use imaging tests to check whether a patient was having suicidal thoughts.

The scientists conducted their analysis on a group of 34 patients: 17 of them were struggling with suicidal tendencies, the other half were not experiencing such a problem. The subjects were shown three lists, each containing 10 words. The first list contained positive terms (e.g. 'glory'), the second negative (e.g. 'evil'), while the third list contained words related to suicidal behaviour (e.g. 'death').

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the head was performed on the patients during the reading of each list, so that it was possible to observe how the subjects' brains reacted to the words being read.

The US study was quite extensive and the results were quite promising - among other things, it turned out that it was possible to distinguish, as described above, whether someone was experiencing suicidal thoughts or not, even with an accuracy of more than 90 per cent. However, there is still a long way to go before fMRI is routinely used to determine whether a patient has suicidal tendencies.