Faculty Sponsor: Alexis May, Ph.D.
Julia Gillotti
Julia is a rising senior (’24) from Cheshire, CT. Julia graduated from Cheshire Academy in 2020 as the valedictorian of her class. At Wesleyan, she is a psychology major and religious studies minor. She works in two psychology labs, the Risk, Prevention, and Intervention Lab and the Psychometrics Lab. Outside of work and class, Julia serves as the president of Rho Epsilon Pi, and enjoys rock climbing and spending time with her horses. She hopes to continue her education in graduate school to ultimately become a licensed therapist and mental health advocate.
Abstract: Little is known about romantic couples’ discussions regarding self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB), a sensitive and often stigmatized topic. This study investigated three questions related to partner accuracy in identifying SITB history in their hospitalized partner (i.e., the patient). Ninety-one military patients and their romantic partners provided data as part of a larger RCT testing a partner-involved suicide intervention. All participants (n=182) answered baseline questions about their own substance use and SITB histories, followed by questions that assessed the extent of their knowledge about their partners’ histories. The present study specifically examines how much partners know about patients’ histories. Generally, partners were most aware of patients’ marijuana use, SI history, and likelihood of future SI and SA. These results support current findings that romantic partners share certain parts of their suicide histories, but often not all aspects. No significant relationship was found between partner accuracy score and partners’ relationship quality (β=.060, p=.437) nor positive communication (β = .073, p=.341). These results suggest that couples across the spectrum of relationship functioning may benefit from an intervention designed to teach them how to discuss SITB. The two most common ways that partners discovered patients’ SI were through being told directly or from a gut feeling, further indicating that most couples are speaking about SITB histories in some capacity.
JG-Poster