Suicide Risk After Recent Attempt or Psychiatric Hospitalization

Predicting suicidal risk remains extremely difficult, given the rarity of attempts and completions and the number of possible predictors. In two analyses of data from governmental registries, researchers examine two highly predictive factors — prior history of a suicide attempt and recent psychiatric hospitalization.

The first research group examined all 75,401 discharges from public-hospital psychiatric inpatient care in England in 2004–2005. During the following year, 4935 patients (6.5%) were readmitted for self-harm, 32% within 1 month of discharge and 57% within 3 months. The strongest risk factors were previous admission for self-harm (hazard ratio, 4.85) and previous diagnosis of personality disorder (HR, 3.71), depression and anxiety…