Research finding · September 2026
Young people’s responses to distress may reveal information about future self-harm and suicide risk
Suicide risk assessment often relies on what people are able and willing to report about their thoughts, emotions, and recent behavior. These conversations are essential, but self-report has limitations: people may fear stigma or hospitalization, have difficulty recognizing or describing what they are experiencing, or choose not to disclose suicidal thoughts. Researchers have therefore been exploring whether behavioral tasks could complement traditional assessments by measuring psychological processes as they happen. One area of interest is how people respond to frustration and distress, including their emotional reactions and ability to persist through an uncomfortable experience. Finding objective measures associated with future suicidal behavior could eventually give clinicians another source of information alongside conversations and questionnaires, particularly for adolescents with a history of suicidal behavior or self-harm.
With their Linked Standard Research Grant, Dr. Joan Asarnow, Dr. Michele Berk, and Dr. Marsha Linehan examined whether adolescents’ responses during a computerized frustration task could help predict self-harm, suicidal ideation, and depression over the following year. The study followed 102 adolescents with histories of recurrent self-harm who completed the Mirror Tracing Persistence Task, which requires participants to trace geometric shapes under deliberately frustrating conditions while researchers measured changes in emotion and how long they persisted. While equivalent at the beginning, adolescents who showed less increase in negative emotion during the task went on to report greater self-harm, suicidal ideation, and depression severity across 12 months, while persistence and changes in positive emotion did not predict these outcomes. Although it may seem surprising that a weaker negative reaction predicted worse outcomes, the finding aligns with previous depression research suggesting that blunted emotional responses to distressing experiences may be a marker of greater depressive symptoms, which themselves often co-occur with self-harm and suicidal ideation. Although the finding requires replication and does not mean the task can currently determine an individual’s suicide risk, it suggests that measuring emotional responses as they happen may provide information about future risk for suicidal and self-harm behaviors that self-report alone cannot capture.
Citation: López R Jr, Ellis AJ, Henson V, Berk MS, McCauley E, Asarnow JR. The mirror tracing persistence task: an indicator of future adolescent suicide risk? Psychiatry Res Commun. 2026;6(3):100265. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psycom.2026.100265
This finding comes from an AFSP-funded study — see the grant below ↓
