Intensive Care Unit Survivors Have Excess Risk for Suicide and Self-Harm

Increasing numbers of people are surviving after treatment in intensive care units (ICUs), and many of these survivors have long-term physical and psychiatric sequelae. ICU survivorship is associated with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, and psychosis. Is ICU survivorship also associated with excess risk for suicide and self-harm?

Using linked databases, Canadian researchers evaluated 423,000 consecutive ICU survivors and compared them with >3 million consecutive survivors of hospitalizations without ICU care in Ontario between 2009 and 2017. After propensity-score weighting, compared with non-ICU hospitalization, ICU admission was associated significantly with excess risk for suicide (adjusted haz…