Starace F
Department of Psychology, University of Napoli, Italy.
AIDS Care. 1995;7 Suppl 2:S123-8. doi: 10.1080/09540129550126100.
In spite of the attention devoted by researchers and clinicians to the suicidal risk of AIDS patients, the magnitude of the phenomenon has not yet been clarified. Indeed, some authors have found a rate of suicide among subjects with AIDS 66 times higher than that of the general population (Marzuk et al., 1988a), whereas others report that the number of documented suicides represents only a small proportion of all deaths in AIDS patients (Engelman et al., 1988). Methodological differences in the sampling strategies, in the definition of suicidality and in the criteria followed to ascertain a suicide case can account, at least in part, for such discrepancies. Several potential risk factors (neuropsychiatric morbidity, alcohol and drug abuse, behavioural disorders, etc.) are currently believed to increase the suicide risk of AIDS patients. Their role, however, is still controversial. This paper summarizes the literature published on completed suicide in AIDS subjects, with special emphasis on the methodological problems that can be identified in this research area.
尽管研究人员和临床医生都关注艾滋病患者的自杀风险，但这一现象的严重程度尚未得到明确。的确，一些作者发现艾滋病患者的自杀率比普通人群高66倍（Marzuk等人，1988a），而另一些人则报告说，有记录的自杀人数仅占艾滋病患者所有死亡人数的一小部分（Engelman等人，1988）。抽样策略、自杀倾向的定义以及确定自杀案例所遵循的标准等方法上的差异至少可以部分解释这些差异。目前认为，几种潜在的风险因素（神经精神疾病、酒精和药物滥用、行为障碍等）会增加艾滋病患者的自杀风险。然而，它们的作用仍存在争议。本文总结了关于艾滋病患者自杀身亡的文献，特别强调了该研究领域中可以识别的方法学问题。
