Neurological diseases and risk of suicide attempt: a case-control study.

INTRODUCTION

Neurological diseases have a profound impact on quality of life. We investigated the risk of suicide attempt in ten neurological diseases.

METHODS

Case-control study. Cases were identified from the Danish Poison Information Centre database in the period 2006-2013. The prevalence of ten neurological diagnoses was compared with the prevalence in a randomly sampled age- and gender-matched control group.

RESULTS

We identified 8974 cases of suicidal attempt and 89,740 controls. We found an association between suicide attempt in nine of ten neurological diseases and disease groups, including stroke [odds ratio (OR) 3.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) (2.8-3.6)], Huntington's disease [OR 8.8, 95% CI (3.2-24.1)], amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [OR 5.0, 95% CI (1.7-14.6)], Parkinson's disease [OR 2.9, 95% CI (1.8-4.6)], Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative diseases [OR 4.8, 95% CI (3.1-7.5)], multiple sclerosis [OR 1.5, 95% CI (1.1-2.1)], epilepsy [OR 4.5, 95% CI (4.1-5.0)], hereditary and idiopathic neuropathy [OR 2.2, 95% CI (1.1-4.3)] and myasthenia gravis [OR 4.3, 95% CI (2.0-9.4)].

CONCLUSION

Nine out of ten chronic neurological diseases were associated with an increased risk of suicide attempt. These data must be considered for clinicians treating this vulnerable group of patients.