The ultra brief checklist for suicidality

Abstract

Background: Accurately identifying patients at an elevated risk of suicide in minimal time is an important mental health issue. Therefore, we developed the Ultra Brief Checklist for Suicidality (UBCS) and reported its psychometric properties. Methods: We studied 544 participants who had completed the UBCS, other self-report measures, and structured clinical interviews by trained interviewers. We explored the psychometric properties of the UBCS's paper-based and online versions by identifying optimal cutoff points, sensitivity, specificity, etc. of all participants. Results: The mean score of the UBCS (paper-pencil version) in the no-suicide-risk group was 0.23 (SD = 0.73), while in the Risk-Positive (RP) and the High-Risk (HR) groups it was 3.54 (SD = 3.22) and 6.31 (SD = 3.97), respectively. Optimal cutoff points for the RP and HR groups were 1 (AUC = 0.914) and 3 (AUC = 0.928), respectively. Limitations: The current findings apply only to adults, not to children or adolescents. The original MINI was used as the assessment instrument's reference standard rather than MINI 7.0.2 of DSM-5. Predictive validity was not addressed as this was not a longitudinal cohort study. Conclusions: The UBCS was rigorously tested and validated. More than half the participants completed the UBCS within a minute. It possesses adequate psychometric properties and can be easily administered with minimal clinician time and effort, via paper or Internet. We believe it can contribute to suicide risk identification and timely interventions.