Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T10:43:08.195Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Suicide among psychiatric hospital in-patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Alec Roy  and
Ronald Draper
Alec Roy*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey—New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA; Brockville Psychiatric Hospital, Brockville, Ontario, Canada
Ronald Draper
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey—New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA; Brockville Psychiatric Hospital, Brockville, Ontario, Canada
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Alec Roy, Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, Psychiatry Service, 116A, 385 Tremont Avenue, East Orange, New Jersey, 07018–1095, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

We examined for risk factors for suicide among psychiatric in-patients by comparing 37 in-patients from an Ontario Provincial Psychiatric Hospital who had committed suicide with 37 age and sex matched in-patient controls. Significantly more of the suicide victims had made a previous suicide attempt (62·2 v. 35·1%), suffered from schizophrenia (75·7 v. 35·1%), were involuntary at their last admission (70·3 v. 43·2%) and lived alone (70·3 v. 43·2%). Only six patients committed suicide on the ward. Almost a third of the patients, the majority schizophrenic, committed suicide after having been in the hospital for more than a year. These results suggest that in the psychiatric hospital setting the in-patient at risk for suicide has previously exhibited suicidal behaviour, suffers from schizophrenia, was admitted involuntarily, lives alone and that the risk of suicide may remain high among long-stay schizophrenics.

Type
Brief Report
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 199 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barraclough, B. (1987). The suicide rate of epilepsy. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 76, 339–345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beisser, A. & Blanchette, J. J. (1961). A study of suicides in a mental hospital. Diseases of the Nervous System 22, 365–369.Google Scholar
Cooper, S., Kelly, C. & King, D. (1992). 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid in cerebrospinal fluid and prediction of suicidal behaviour in schizophrenia. Lancet 340, 940–941.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crammer, J. (1984). The special characteristics of suicide in hospital in-patients. British Journal of Psychiatry 145, 460–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goh, S., Salmons, P. & Whittington, R. (1989). Hospital suicides: are there preventable factors? Profile of the psychiatric hospital suicide. British Journal of Psychiatry 154, 247–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miles, P. (1977). Conditions predisposing to suicide: a review. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 164, 231–246.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morgan, H. & Priest, P. (1984). Assessment of suicide risk in psychiatric in-patients. British Journal of Psychiatry 145, 467–469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roy, A. (1979). Some determinants of affective symptoms in epileptics. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 24, 554–556.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roy, A. (1982). Risk factors for suicide in psychiatric patients. Archives of General Psychiatry 39, 1089–1095.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roy, A. (1993). Serotonin, suicide and schizophrenia. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 38, 369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, A., DeJong, J. & Linnoila, M. (1989). Cerebrospinal fluid monoamine metabolites and suicidal behavior in depressed patients: a five-year follow-up study. Archives of General Psychiatry 46, 609–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sletten, I., Brown, M., Evenson, R. & Altman, H. (1972). Suicide in mental hospital patients. Diseases of the Nervous System 33, 328–334.Google ScholarPubMed
Wolfersdorf, M. & Vogel, R. (1987). Types of hospital suicide and depression: some selected results of a study on suicides committed during psychiatric hospitalization. Crisis 8, 37–48.Google Scholar