Citation

Qin P. Psychiatr. Danub. 2006; 18(Suppl 1): 76.

Affiliation

National Centre for Register-based Research, University of Aarhus, Taasingegade 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. pq@ncrr.dk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Facultas Universitatis Studiorum Zagrabiensis - Danube Symposion of Psychiatry)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16963985

Abstract

Extensive studies have demonstrated that persons committing suicide have more often experienced both recent life events and hospitalization for psychiatric disorders than comparison controls or the general population. Suicide can be the last-resort response to either stressful life events or psychiatric illness or a combination of both. In Denmark, a history of hospitalized psychiatric illness is the strongest predictor for suicide. 44% of suicide victims had such a history and 57% of them were actually admitted to a psychiatric hospital within the last one year prior to suicide. Negative life events that are most frequently related to suicide include unemployment, low income, divorce, job absence due to sickness, and bereavement from losing spouse or a child. These unfavourable life events highly interacted with persons' psychiatric status although they increased the risk for suicide significantly even when other factors like psychiatric disorders were controlled. It is difficult to disentangle the pathway behind this co-occurrence as whether psychiatric hospitalization leads to life-changing events or it is an outcome of a reaction to severe stress from life events. Controversy has always been a part of a life event and mental health research because of the complexity of concepts, measures and research designs. This presentation will cover the current research literature on this topic, and also present results from recent studies based on data from Danish population longitudinal registers with respect to the relative importance of life events and psychiatric hospitalization as well as how life events and psychiatric hospitalization interplay with each other to increase the risk for suicide.

Language: en