Background: This meta-analysis was conducted to assess the association between problem-solving skills and suicidal behaviors and elucidate the potential role of problem-solving skills in influencing the occurrence of suicidal behaviors.
Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched until August 16, 2023. Studies addressing the associations between problem-solving skills and suicidal behaviors were included. The I2 statistics were used to examine between-study heterogeneity. The Begg and Egger tests were used to determine the possibility of publication bias. Using a random-effects model, the overall effect size was presented as an odds ratio (OR) or standard mean difference (SMD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results: Of 8040 identified studies, 29 (including 974,542 participants) were eligible. Based on observational studies, problem-solving skills were found to be inversely related to suicidal ideation (OR = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.50, 0.82); suicide attempts (OR = 0.75; 95% CI: 0.63, 0.89), and suicide death (OR = 0.02; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.03). The overall score of problem-solving skills was higher in those who did not attempt suicide than those who did (SMD = 0.84; 95% CI: 54, 1.13). Based on randomized clinical trials, problem-solving therapy was found to reduce the risk of suicide (OR = 0.51; 95% CI: 0.29, 0.87). Furthermore, the overall risk of suicide was lower among those who received problem-solving therapy than those who did not (SMD = -0.02; 95% CI: -0.29, 0.25).
Conclusions: This meta-analysis revealed an inverse association between problem-solving skills and suicidal behaviors. However, further research is needed to better understand the complex relationship between problem-solving skills and suicidal behaviors.
Copyright: © 2023 Darvishi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.