Survival after Attempted Suicide in Sweden. A follow-up after 20 years

The purpose of this longitudinal prospective investigation was to examine the survival of patients who had been brought to the Department of Internal Medicine at the Serafimer Hospital, Sweden because of attempted suicide (parasuicidal poisonings). The death rate during the 20-year follow-up period 1972–1992 was 56% for the men and 40% for the women. Forty seven per cent of the men and 40% of the women who died had died as early as at the age of 16–49. The mortality in the general population from this region of Greater Stockholm during the same 20-year period was 14% and differed enormously from the mortality of these patients, which was not expected. There were 538 parasuicides, 201 male and 337 female patients, and we followed them from 1972–76 to 1992. The age range was 16–75 years. At the conclusion of the follow-up period, the age distribution of the sample was between 36 and 85 years. A minority of the deaths had a natural cause, 62 out of 248. Somewhat more of the unnatural causes were suicides than accidents according to the autopsy reports. Mortality is considerably higher among males than among females, but is not especially pronounced among the non-natural causes, accidents and suicides, where it is 75% for both males and females Twenty five per cent of the deaths had a natural cause. We conclude that parasuicidal poisonings should be followed because these individuals run the highest risk of repeated suicide attempts

Autopsy · Cause of death · Disease · Environmental health · Injury prevention · Medical emergency · Mortality rate · Natural death · Occupational safety and health · Poison control · Population · Psychiatry · Suicide prevention · Demography · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Medicine · Poisoning and overdose treatments · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies · Internal Medicine · Pediatrics · Surgery

• Characteristics of Chinese Suicide Attempters

  Jie Zhang, Shuhua Jia et al.•Death Studies•2006

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