To investigate predictors for repetition of suicide attempts 1–12 months after a suicide attempt.

Two hundred and sixteen patients who had made a suicide attempt were investigated after 1 month, and 178 were followed up again after 12 months.

During 1–12 months after the suicide attempt, 30 patients reattempted suicide (repeaters). During 0–1 month 13 patients had reattempted suicide (early repeaters), and nine of them also repeated between 1 and 12 months. Repeaters had more often made three or more attempts before index attempt, they more often were in treatment at the index attempt and at 1 month they had lower global functioning and higher suicide ideation. In a Cox Regression analysis two predictors for repetition between 1 and 12 months remained significant; early repetition (OR 6.7, 95% CI, 3.0–14.9) and having GAF-scores below 49 (median cut-off) (OR 3.4 (95% CI, 1.5–7.5).

Our findings suggest that repetitive behaviour in itself is a strong predictor of future attempts. Strategies focusing on the repetitive behaviour are warranted.

After parasuicide there is a high risk of reattempts. However, it seems that patients who survived severe suicidal trauma recover well. Therefore, the outcome of patients with severe multiple blunt trauma as a result of a suicide attempt was investigated with respect to psychiatric and somatic health, quality of life (QOL) and suicide reattempt rates.

Patients who underwent a suicide attempt were isolated from a prospectively collected sample of trauma patients from a level I University Trauma Centre. Follow-up examination was performed 6.1 ± 3 years after the trauma. A physical and psychiatric examination was performed, using established psychiatric scales.

Twelve percent of severely injured patients were identified as suicide attempters (male/female: 37/28, mean age 38 ± 18 years, mean Injury Severity Score (ISS) 40 ± 15 points). A psychiatric diagnosis was present in 90% at the time of the suicide attempt. Twenty-one patients died during the hospital stay (32%) and six subjects died thereafter, none due to suicide. Thirty-five individuals were eligible for examination. None of them had reattempted suicide. Seventeen (48%) had good outcomes reflected by absent or ambulatory psychiatric treatment, employment, normal psychiatric findings and good psychosocial ability. An indeterminate outcome was determined in 24%. Predictive variables for an adverse outcome (10 patients, 28%) were found to be a diagnosis of schizophrenia, continued psychiatric treatment and being without employment.

Despite the seriousness of the suicide attempt, survivors recovered well in about half the cases with no further suicide attempt in any patient. An early psychiatric consultation already on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is recommended.

In the 1980s, suicide rates in Denmark were among the highest in the world. In 1992, a Suicide Prevention Centre was opened in Copenhagen with a 2-week programme of social and psychological treatment. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of the Suicide Prevention Centre.

In a quasi-experimental study, 362 patients in the Suicide Prevention Centre and a parallel comparison group of 39 patients were interviewed with European Parasuicide Study Interviewer Schedule I (EPSIS I), which is a comprehensive interview including several validated scales. All patients were invited to follow-up interviews with EPSIS II and followed in the National Patients Register and the Cause of Death Register.

At the 1-year follow-up, 59% of patients in the intervention group and 53% of patients in the comparison groups were interviewed with EPSIS II. The intervention group obtained a significantly greater improvement in Beck’s Depression Inventory, Hopelessness Scale, Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale and CAGE-score and a significantly lower repetition rate.

Although the design cannot exclude selection bias, it seems likely that the improvement in the intervention group was facilitated by the treatment.

Despite of higher rates of substance-related disorders in psychiatric patients and suicides than in the general population, there is no clear specificity to the relationship between nicotine use and other psychiatric disorders for suicide risk.

One hundred and sixty-three suicides (mean age 49.8 ± 19.3 years; 64.4% males; using psychological autopsy method) and 396 control persons (mean age 51.6 ± 17.0 years; 55.8% males) were assessed with a standardised semi-structured interview including SCID-I and SCID-II (for DSM-IV). Suicides and controls were compared in terms of nicotine consumption and psychiatric disorders. Logistic regression was used to evaluate the interactions of tobacco consumption with psychiatric disorders.

Suicides were significantly more often current smokers and heavy users of cigarettes (>20 cigarettes per day; P < 0.001, each). Alcohol dependence, other axis I disorders than substance-related disorders, and cluster B personality disorder(s) remained independent predictors for suicide in both genders, current nicotine consumption only in men (OR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.3–5.2).

In males, but not in females, nicotine consumption contributed to risk of completed suicide after control for psychiatric disorders and has to be considered as independent risk factor for suicide.

Peritraumatic dissociation is a risk factor for developing PTSD. The Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire (PDEQ) is a self-report inventory used to assess dissociation that occurred at the time of a trauma. The aim of this study was the validation the PDEQ in French.

Ninety French speaking traumatized victims presenting to the emergency department were recruited. They were administered the PDEQ shortly after exposure and others trauma-related measures 2 weeks and 1 month posttrauma.

Principal components factor analyses suggested a single factor solution for the PDEQ. Significant correlations between the PDEQ and acute and posttraumatic stress symptoms indicated moderate to strong convergent validity. The PDEQ also showed satisfactory test–retest reliability and internal consistency.

This study is the first one to investigate such detailed psychometric findings on the PDEQ. This confirms the unity of the concept of peritraumatic dissociation and the value of the PDEQ-French Version to assess it.

To evaluate the effects of internal displacement and resettlement within Turkey on the emotional and behavioral profile of children, age 5–18 after controlling for possible confounding and demographic variables.

We conducted a national population survey using a self-weighted, equal probability sample. We compared the CBCL, TRF and YSR responses regarding children with (n = 1644) and without (n = 1855) experience of internal displacement. We examined the effects of gender, age, paternal employment, resettlement, urban residence and physical illness.

The children and adolescents with internal displacement had significantly higher internalizing, externalizing and total problem scores on the CBCL and YSR, and higher internalizing scores on the TRF. The effect of displacement was related to higher internalizing problems when factors like physical illness, child age, child gender and urban residence were accounted. The overall effect was small explaining only 0.1–1.5% of the total variance by parent reports, and not evident by teacher reports.

To our knowledge the present study is the first to examine Turkish children and adolescents with and without experience of internal displacement. The results are consistent with previous immigration studies: child age, gender, presence of physical illness and urban residence were more important predictors of internalization and externalization problem scores irrespective of informant source.

This study investigated psychological symptoms in Bosnian women 3–4 years after their arrival in Sweden.

A simple random sample of 163 Bosnian women aged 19–59 was drawn from the Swedish populations register in 1996. The control group consisted of 392 Swedish-born women. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist 25 (HSCL-25) and the Posttraumatic Symptom Scale (PTSS-10) were used to measure psychological symptoms of depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) for psychological symptoms after adjustment for age, country of birth, education, marital status, economic difficulties, social network, and feeling secure.

The prevalence of symptoms of PTSD was 28.3% among the Bosnian women. Bosnian women had significantly higher risks of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress than Swedish-born women. For depression the odds ratio was 9.50 among Bosnian women.

Psychiatric community interventions need to target Bosnian refugee women. Awareness among health-care workers who encounter these women in a clinical setting should be improved.

In a long-term follow-up of anorexia nervosa (AN) patients, somatic, psychological and social variables at clinical presentation should be investigated using a multilevel approach.

This study isolated predictors known from the literature over longer time periods and carried out a separate investigation of predictors in a sample of 81 AN patients of the Heidelberg–Mannheim study over a mean period of 12 years (range 9–19 years). Separate hierarchic regression analyses on the basis of the course of the Morgan–Russell categories were calculated for four individually recorded areas: anamnestic, psychological, somatic and social data sets.

Age at the onset of the disease, purging behavior, low serum albumin, high glutamic-oxalo acetic transaminase (GOT) psychopathology (ANSS) and social pathology had the highest predictive value qualities. In survival analysis overall assessment of all six main predictors at clinical presentation could differentiate all patients who recovered from those who remained ill (log-rank test P = 0.019).

A small number of variables were important for detecting a good or poor long-term course of AN. At onset of the disease, it seems necessary to evaluate these psychological, somatic and social predictors.

Although the epidemiology of Eating Disorders (ED) has been highly developed in Spain, further research considering false negatives and also the prevalence of these disorders in males are needed. They were the aims of the present study.

One thousand and seventy six adolescents (500 males and 576 females) participated in a two-stage survey. At the age of 13, apart from exploring numerous clinical and psychosocial variables, they were assessed by means of self-administered screening instruments, the eating attitude test (EAT), bulimic investigatory test Edinburgh (BITE), and body shape questionnaire (BSQ). The subjects were interviewed again 2 years later. Afterwards, 159 probable cases and 150 controls were interviewed by means of the structured interview SCAN.

Prevalence of ED in adolescents was 3.71% (95% CI 2.58–4.83; 6.4% of females, 0.6% of males): anorexia nervosa 0.1%, bulimia nervosa 0.75%, eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) = 2.88%. The rate of false negative was 2.6% of the control group and most of them were EDNOS.

The prevalence of ED obtained in our study, higher than others found in previous Spanish research, and a relatively high percentage of false negatives both indicate that up to now the prevalence of ED in Spanish adolescents could be underestimated.

To estimate the overall annual incidence and age group distribution of eating disorders in a representative sample of adolescent female residents of Navarra, Spain.

We studied a representative sample of 2734 adolescent Navarran females between 13 and 22 years of age who were free of any eating disorder at the start of our study. Eighteen months into the study, we visited the established centers and the eating attitudes test (EAT-40) and eating disorder inventory (EDI) Questionnaires were administered to the entire study population. We obtained a final response of 92%. All adolescents whose EAT score was over 21 points and a randomized sample of those who scored 21 or below, were interviewed. Any person meeting the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN) or eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) was considered a case.

We detected 90 new cases of eating disorders. Taking into consideration the randomly selected group whose EAT score was 21 points or below, we estimated the overall weighted incidence of eating disorders to be 4.8% (95% CI: 2.8–6.8), after 18 months of observation, in which EDNOS predominated with an incidence of 4.2% (95% CI: 2.0–6.3). The incidence of AN was 0.3% (95% CI: 0.2–0.5), while that of BN was also found to be 0.3% (95% CI: 0.2–0.5). The highest incidence was observed in the group of adolescents between 15 and 16 years of age.

The overall incidence of ED in a cohort of 2509 adolescents after 18 months of follow-up was 4.8% (95% CI: 2.8–6.8), with EDNOS outweighing the other diagnoses. The majority of new cases of eating disorders were diagnosed between ages 15 and 16.