Citation

Beautrais AL, Joyce PR, Mulder RT. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 1998; 37(5): 504-511.

Affiliation

Canterbury Suicide Project, Christchurch School of Medicine, New Zealand. suicide@chmeds.ac.nz

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, Publisher Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

9585652

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To compare the history of psychiatric contacts among young people who have made medically serious suicide attempts and control subjects. METHOD: Using a case-control design, the authors contrasted 129 young people who made serious suicide attempts with 153 randomly selected community controls on a series of measures of lifetime, prior year, and prior month contacts with psychiatric services. RESULTS: Of those who made serious suicide attempts, 78.3% had a lifetime history of contact with health services for psychiatric reasons, 72.1% reported contact within the year preceding the suicide attempt 58.9% reported contact within the month preceding the suicide attempt, and 29.5% had a lifetime history of psychiatric hospital admission. Within the year preceding the suicide attempt, 21.7% had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and 67.4% had outpatient consultations for psychiatric problems. Multiple logistic regression suggested that the best psychiatric service predictors of risk of serious suicide attempt were admission within the preceding year (p < .005) and outpatient consultation within the preceding month (p < .0001). CONCLUSIONS: Young people making serious suicide attempts had vastly elevated rates of a range of psychiatric contacts including hospital admissions and outpatient consultations. These findings imply that the development of improved treatment and management strategies for young people with psychiatric morbidity may be a very effective approach to reducing youthful suicidal behaviors.

Language: en