Reducing Self-Dehumanization to Examine Oxytocin and Suicide Risk

Conditions

• Control Intervention
• Rehumanization Intervention

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

ALL

Age

18 Years - 40 Years

Healthy Volunteers

Accepted

Interventions

• Rehumanized Intervention — OTHER
  Participants will: 1\. be provided with a lay summary of an ostensible research article that used quantitative and qualitative data to capture the experiences of feeling "less than human" and mechanisms for reclaiming human identity. The summary will reveal general themes of humanness based on participant responses including body and soul awareness, agency, connection, and creativity. 1. write a 30-minute reflective essay on "how did the rehumanization efforts described in the survey make people feel more human?" where they will be encouraged to use examples from their own lives 2. asked to create videos based on the insights shared in the essays. The researchers will explain, "We would like to record you reading your essay on camera. We believe it would be especially impactful for clinicians developing these interventions to hear directly from someone who has recently navigated similar experiences."
• Control Intervention — OTHER
  Participants will: 1\. be provided with a lay summary of an ostensible research article that used quantitative and qualitative data to capture the experiences of political attitudes and routes to political sophistication. The summary will reveal general themes of political sophistication based on participant responses including gathering information through diverse news outlets, analyzing policy and legislation, and participation in civic engagement 1. write a 30-minute reflective essay on ""how did the political efforts described in the survey refine political attitudes?" where they will be encouraged to use examples from their own lives 2. asked to create videos based on the insights shared in the essays. The researchers will explain, "We plan to take excerpts of what you write here and share it with future voters to aid in developing political attitudes."
• Clinical Interview — DIAGNOSTIC_TEST
  Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview-Short Form (SITBI-SF). Participants will complete an in-person interview featuring 72-items about their history of self-injury and suicidal behaviors. This interview includes 6 yes/no style questions about suicidal thoughts, suicidal plans, suicidal gestures, suicidal attempts, nonsuicidal self-injury thoughts, and nonsuicidal self-injury. Each category that is endorsed, across the lifetime, has follow up questions surrounding times, duration, intensity, severity, type, and if medical attention was sought. This interview has sound psychometric properties.
• Self-Report Measures — OTHER
  Depressive Symptom Index - Suicidality Subscale (DSI-SS). Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8). Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ). Self-Dehumanization Scale (SDS).
• Blood Draw — OTHER
  Five milliliters of blood will be drawn before and after study interventions for the quantification of plasma oxytocin concentrations by certified phlebotomists. Samples will be collected into chilled EDTA tubes, inverted ten times to mix with anticoagulants, and centrifuged at 1600g for 15 minutes at 4˚C. Cleared plasma will be aliquoted into cryotubes and stored at -80˚C. Consistent with expert recommendations, oxytocin levels will be obtained from the samples diluted 1:4 (i.e., oxytocin can be discarded through plasma proteins when incorporating an extraction step before conducting the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay \[ELISA\]). Second, to buffer against contrasting concerns, an aliquot of each sample will be analyzed for test-retest purposes. Oxytocin concentrations will be measured using a validated commercially available and sensitive ELISA neurophysin kit (Abcam).

Study Details

The goal of this experiment is to further determine if self-dehumanization is a novel risk factor for suicide. This study will reduce self-dehumanization using a novel re-humanization condition and compare this group to a control group to analyze the pathway between higher perceptions of self-dehumanization, suicidal ideation, and changes in oxytocin concentrations. It is hypothesized that participants randomly assigned to the re-humanized condition will exhibit decreases in suicidal ideation and increases in oxytocin concentrations as compared to the control condition, which will not display significant changes. Further, we will explore if the magnitude of the oxytocin response will partially mediate the change in suicidal ideation.

Key Dates

Start date

Aug 31, 2026

Status verified

Dec 2025

Primary completion

Aug 31, 2027

Completion

Aug 31, 2028

Study Design

Enrollment

50 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

TREATMENT

Arms

• Experimental: Rehumanized Intervention
  This self-rehumanization intervention will involve a set of multi-sensory activities (i.e., reading, writing, and speaking) to prompt body and soul awareness, agency, connection, and creativity.
• Active Comparator: Control Intervention
  Control Intervention about political attitudes

Primary Outcome Measure

Change in Suicidal Ideation [ Time Frame: This measure will be collected at Baseline and after the experiment (approximately 30 minutes later). Then, suicidal ideation will be collected again 1 month later. ]

Central Contacts

• Morgan Robison, M.S.
  (540) 589-4853
  [email protected]
• Thomas E Joiner, Ph.D.
  (850) 644-2040
  [email protected]

Locations (1)

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