[Suicidality in schizophrenic psychosis: a current overview].

BACKGROUND

Suicidality in schizophrenic psychosis is an important topic but stands in clinical everyday work behind the perception of suicide especially in affective disorders. Schizophrenic psychosis is recognized as an independent risk factor for suicide attempts and suicides, whereas it poses particular challenges to the clinical professional due to the frequent unpredictability, abruptness and brutality of the methods used. For this reason, the suicide of a psychotic patient often leaves the professional and non-professional environment disturbed.

AIMS

An overview of the existing relevant literature on suicide in psychosis is given. Explanations on the psychodynamics, indications on pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy and considerations on prevention round off this article and provide an up to date overview of this topic for clinicians.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

A search was carried out in PubMed and Google scholar using the terms "suicide", "suicidality", "schizophrenia", "suicide AND schizophrenia", "suicide AND psychosis", "suicidality AND schizophrenia", "suicidality AND psychosis", "suicidality AND psychosis AND prevention", "suicide AND psychosis AND prevention", "suicidality AND schizophrenia AND prevention", "suicide AND schizophrenia AND prevention".

CONCLUSION

Clinicians must have knowledge of the specific risk factors for suicide in psychotic patients, the characteristics of suicide in terms of design and temporal connection with treatment. The exploration and assessment of suicidality is often more difficult in psychotic patients than in affective or personality disorder patients, as there are often impulsive suicide attempts that can be explained by (suddenly occurring) psychotic symptoms and are therefore difficult or even impossible to foresee.