Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:38:39.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Suicide in Psychiatric Patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

D. H. Myers
Affiliation:
Shelton Hospital, Shrewsbury, Salop—University of Birmingham
C. D. Neal
Affiliation:
Shelton Hospital, Shrewsbury, Salop

Summary

The study relates to suicides occurring in Shropshire during 1965 to 1973 inclusive. Psychiatric patients who had committed suicide were compared with others, matched by sex and age who had not done so. The suicide group included a higher proportion of members who had behaved violently, experienced a broken marriage (through death, separation or divorce) or earlier had deliberately harmed themselves, often by dangerous means. Of the psychiatric patients who committed suicide 63 per cent had seen a doctor within a month beforehand, yet very few were receiving adequate physical treatment for depressive illness at the time of their death. Immigrants from eastern Europe were found to be particularly prone to suicide.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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

Adelstein, A. & zMardon, C. (1975) Suicides 1961–1974. Population Trends No. 2, 13–17. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. London: H.M.S.O.Google Scholar
Bagley, C., Jacobson, S. & Rehin, A. (1976) Completed suicide: a taxonomic analysis of clinical and social data. Psychological Medicine, 6, 429–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barraclough, B. M., Bunch, J., Nelson, B. & Sainsbury, P. (1974) A hundred cases of suicide: clinical aspects. British Journal of Psychiatry, 125, 355–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barraclough, B. M., & Pallis, D. J. (1975) Depression followed by suicide: a comparison of depressed suicides with living depressives. Psychological Medicine, 5, 5561.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blackwell, B. (1976) Treatment adherence. British Journal of Psychiatry, 129, 513–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Census (1961) England and Wales. County report, Shropshire. General Register Office. London: H.M.S.O. 1964.Google Scholar
Census (1971) England and Wales. Report for the County of Salop, as constituted on 1st April, 1974. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. London: H.M.S.O. 1975.Google Scholar
Copas, J. B., Freeman-Browne, D. L. & Robin, A. A. (1971) Danger periods for suicide in patients under treatment. Psychological Medicine, 1, 400–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coppen, A., Noguera, R., Bailey, J., Burns, B. H., Swani, M. S., Hare, E. H., Gardner, R. & Maggs, R. (1971) Prophylactic lithium in affective disorders. Lancet, ii, 275–9.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E. (1897) Le Suicide. Paris. Translated 1952 as Suicide: A Study in Sociology, by Spaulding, J. A. and Simpson, C., pp 191206. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Falconer, M. A. (1973) Reversibility by temporal-lobe resection of the behavioural abnormalities of temporal-lobe epilepsy. New England Journal of Medicine, 289, 451–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, S. & Jacobson, D. M. (1972) Suicide in Brighton. British Journal of Psychiatry, 121, 369–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mindham, R. H. S., Howland, C. & Shepherd, M. (1973) An evaluation of continuation therapy with tricyclic antidepressants in depressive illness. Psychological Medicine, 3, 517.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raskin, A. & zCrook, T. H. (1976) The endogenous-neurotic distinction as a predictor of response to antidepressant drugs. Psychological Medicine, 6, 5970.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robin, A. A., Brooke, E. M. & Freeman-Browne, D. L. (1968) Some aspects of suicide in psychiatric patients in Southend. British Journal of Psychiatry, 114, 739–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sainsbury, P. & Barraclough, B. M. (1968) Differences between suicide rates. Nature, 220, 1252.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stengel, E. (1964) Suicide and Attempted Suicide. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Wittenborn, J. R., Plante, M., Burgess, F. & Maurer, H. (1962) A comparison of imipramine, electroconvulsive therapy and placebo in the treatment of depression. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 135, 131–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Health Organisation (x 1974) Suicide and Attempted Suicide. Public Health Paper 58. W.H.O. Geneva.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.