The Real Risk for Suicide in Mental Disorders

Presence of a mental disorder increases the risk for suicide, but investigators typically have estimated risks in relatively brief, small studies, without adjusting for patients who are lost to follow-up or die of unclear causes. To avoid these limitations while ascertaining lifetime risks for suicide associated with specific disorders, researchers used Danish national registries to prospectively follow 176,347 people with a first psychiatric contact for a mental disorder after age 15 and 881,735 nonpsychiatric controls for up to 36 years (birth years, 1955–1991). Data included diagnoses of all treatment recipients; death from suicide or from other causes; emigration; and loss to follow-up.

Absolute risk (i.e., cumulative incidence) for suic…