Citation

Beautrais AL, Joyce PR, Mulder RT. Addiction 1999; 94(8): 1155-1164.

Affiliation

Department of Psychological Medicine, Christchurch School of Medicine, New Zealand. suicide@chmeds.ac.nz

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

10615730

Abstract

AIMS: To compare the relationship between cannabis abuse/dependence and risk of medically serious suicide attempts in individuals making serious suicide attempts and randomly selected comparison subjects. DESIGN: Case-control comparison. SETTING: Cases, a general hospital; controls, the local community. PARTICIPANTS: Cases were 302 consecutive individuals making medically serious suicide attempts; 1028 randomly selected control subjects. MEASUREMENTS: DSM-III-R mental disorder diagnoses; measures of socio-demographic characteristics and childhood and family experiences. FINDINGS: Of those making serious suicide attempts, 16.2% met DSM-III-R criteria for cannabis abuse/dependence at the time of the attempt, compared with 1.9% of comparison subjects (OR = 10.3; 95%CI, 5.95-17.8, p < 0.0001). Risks of serious suicide attempt were significantly related to a series of socio-demographic and childhood characteristics, and to mental disorders that were co-morbid with cannabis abuse/dependence. When the association between cannabis abuse/dependence and suicide attempt risk was controlled for socio-demographic factors, childhood factors and concurrent psychiatric morbidity, there was a marginally significant association (OR = 2.0; 95%CI, 0.97-5.3, p < 0.06) between cannabis abuse/dependence and serious suicide attempt risk. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggested that much of the association between cannabis abuse/dependence and suicide attempt risk arose because: (a) individuals who develop cannabis abuse/dependency tend to come from disadvantaged socio-demographic and childhood backgrounds which, independently of cannabis abuse, are associated with higher risk of suicide attempt, or (b) because cannabis abuse/dependence is co-morbid with other mental disorders which are independently associated with suicidal behaviour. Nevertheless, the possibility remains that cannabis abuse/dependence may make an independent contribution to risk of serious suicide attempt, both directly and through the possible effects of cannabis abuse on risk of other mental disorders.

Language: en