Psychiatric contacts among youths aged 13 through 24 years who have made serious suicide attempts.

OBJECTIVE

To compare the history of psychiatric contacts among young people who have made medically serious suicide attempts and control subjects.

METHOD

Using a case-control design, the authors contrasted 129 young people who made serious suicide attempts with 153 randomly selected community controls on a series of measures of lifetime, prior year, and prior month contacts with psychiatric services.

RESULTS

Of those who made serious suicide attempts, 78.3% had a lifetime history of contact with health services for psychiatric reasons, 72.1% reported contact within the year preceding the suicide attempt 58.9% reported contact within the month preceding the suicide attempt, and 29.5% had a lifetime history of psychiatric hospital admission. Within the year preceding the suicide attempt, 21.7% had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and 67.4% had outpatient consultations for psychiatric problems. Multiple logistic regression suggested that the best psychiatric service predictors of risk of serious suicide attempt were admission within the preceding year (p < .005) and outpatient consultation within the preceding month (p < .0001).

CONCLUSIONS

Young people making serious suicide attempts had vastly elevated rates of a range of psychiatric contacts including hospital admissions and outpatient consultations. These findings imply that the development of improved treatment and management strategies for young people with psychiatric morbidity may be a very effective approach to reducing youthful suicidal behaviors.