Deaths among child and adolescent psychiatric patients.

Of 1,206 patients treated during the period 1970-1980 in a department of child psychiatry in a large city in Sweden 24 (2%) (14 boys and 10 girls) had died by the end of 1981. Twenty-one of these (88%) died of "injuries following external violence and poisoning", of whom 15 (63%) were suicides. Twenty subjects (83%) had grown up in surroundings characterised by one or more psychosocial stress factors. The study indicates a possible link between psychosocial background factors and deaths from "injuries following external violence and poisoning".