# A global alliance to unlock brain mechanisms influencing suicidal behaviors through the ENIGMA Consortium

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · 2021 · $372,230

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
One million people around the world die from suicide annually. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death for all
ages and the second leading cause of death among young people with mental disorders. More people under the
age of 55 die by suicide than from HIV, stroke, influenza, respiratory diseases, chronic lung disease and
homicide. There are at least 20 suicide attempts for every completed suicide. Better prevention strategies are
urgently needed; yet, mechanisms that confer increased risk for suicidal behaviors (ranging from suicidal ideation
to suicide attempts and completed suicide) remain largely unknown. Neurobiological alterations associated with
a history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors may predict future risk and provide targets for interventions. Inquiry
into the neurobiology of suicidal behaviors is hindered by a low base rate of occurrence and the heterogeneous
nature of suicidal attempts, requiring large, inclusive samples from around the world to understand the underlying
mechanisms. We propose a worldwide collaboration to study the neurobiological and transdiagnostic
mechanisms underlying suicidal behaviors in people with mental disorders. Research to date has been
performed in small (typically N<50) samples of suicidal ideators and attempters and examined neural markers
of suicidal behaviors within a single mental illness. We will pool existing neuroimaging and clinical data from
approximately 23,000 individuals with and without mental health disorders forming the “ENIGMA-Suicidal
Thoughts and Behaviors (STB)” initiative. We will integrate and analyze datasets from 24 institutions worldwide
in a cost-efficient manner to (1) identify transdiagnostic neural mechanisms that differentiate between suicidal
ideators and suicide attempters through MRI, and how these vary with age, sex, and disease characteristics; (2)
integrate differential explanatory levels and investigate interacting effects between brain mechanisms and
sociodemographic, psychosocial, clinical and cognitive risk factors on suicidal behaviors. We will identify different
biopsychosocial pathways that discriminate suicidal ideators from people with a history of suicide attempt,
yielding novel suicide risk subtypes based on different configurations of biopsychosocial risk factors; (3) go
beyond binary classifications of ideation or attempt and conduct an in-depth investigation of structural and
functional brain circuitries underlying fine-grained dimensional phenotypes of suicidal behaviors in a subset of
samples. Transdiagnostic brain mechanisms uniquely associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts,
and with more in-depth dimensional suicidal behavior phenotypes, can inform the development of novel
interventions directly or indirectly targeting alterations in these brain circuitries. The biopsychosocial suicide risk
subtypes identified through this study may highlight distinct pathways to suicidal behaviors in different groups of
people and have ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10179496
- **Project number:** 5R01MH117601-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Neda Jahanshad
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $372,230
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-08-09 → 2024-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10179496

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10179496, A global alliance to unlock brain mechanisms influencing suicidal behaviors through the ENIGMA Consortium (5R01MH117601-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10179496. Licensed CC0.

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