Calculating the burden of disease of suicide, attempted suicide, and suicide ideation by estimating disability weights.

A new application of a comprehensive method for assessing the burden of disease for suicidal behavior has been applied to epidemiological data in The Netherlands. Calculating the burden of disease of suicide in DALYs (disability adjusted life years) puts suicide at 21st in the list of most important diseases in The Netherlands with 43,500 DALYs. However, nonfatal suicide attempts also cause suffering, both physical and mental. If this suffering is taken into account, suicide and nonfatal attempted suicide climb to position 11 in this ranking of diseases with 90,700 DALYs. This places suicidal behaviors between dementia (rank 10) and breast cancer (rank 12). If the mental suffering from suicidal thoughts is taken into account as well, the number of DALYs increases to a total of 257,000, so that the full range of suicidal behaviors including suicidal thoughts rank among the most important diseases in The Netherlands. These figures are useful for setting priorities in health care and research funding. They result from a study by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos Institute), and the Vrije Universiteit (Hoeymans & Schoemaker, 2010; Van Spijker, Van Straten, Kerkhof, Hoeymans, & Smit, 2011). Below I summarize the most important aspects of this study.