BACKGROUND While antidepressant-induced suicidality is a concern in younger age groups, there is mounting evidence that these drugs may reduce suicidality in the elderly. Regarding a possible association between other types of psychoactive drugs and suicide, results are inconclusive. Sedatives and hypnotics are widely prescribed to elderly persons with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and sleep...

Frequent advances in technology provide new and exciting opportunities for conducting suicide research and suicide risk assessments. However, to the authors' knowledge, best practices for using technology, specifically the Internet, to conduct research protocols involving suicide risk assessments have not been examined. In research contexts, the use of technology for research on suicidal behavi...

Suicide is among the 10 leading causes of death. Attempted suicide is 10-40 times more frequent than completed suicide and is the strongest single predictor of subsequent suicide. The current study population included all persons in Finland who were hospitalized with a diagnosis of attempted suicide between 1996 and 2003 (N = 18,199). Information on background variables and mortality was obtain...

Suicide risk assessment is a core competency that informs patient treatment and management. It is a process of analysis and synthesis that identifies, prioritizes, and integrates acute and chronic risk and protective factors into an overall assessment of the patient’s suicide risk. Psychiatrists assess suicidal patients who present life-threatening emergencies. Unlike other physicians, psychiat...

There has been recent widespread media coverage of events that involve murder-suicide. In this paper, the author does an extensive literature review of studies about murder-suicide. The purpose is to determine whether the incidence of murder-suicide is increasing and what its risk factors are. The results of this review show that the incidence of murder-suicide remains at under 0.001%. Risk fac...

INTRODUCTION Both psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses are involved in the psychiatric management of suicidal inpatients. One-to-one observation by qualified nurses and the accommodation of the patient in a room close to the infirmary are usually recommended. Suicidal risk should be reassessed periodically to check response to treatment. AIM To compare the severity of depressive symptoms in d...

BACKGROUND Research suggests that suicidal behaviour is aggregated in families. However, due to methodological limitations, including small sample sizes, the strength and pattern of this aggregation remains uncertain. METHOD We examined the familial clustering of completed suicide in a Swedish total population sample. We linked the Cause of Death and Multi-Generation Registers and compared su...

PURPOSE Suicide is the third leading cause of death among older adolescents, and represents a significant public health problem. Preventing suicidal behavior depends on an understanding of the developmental transitions in suicide risk and whether the likelihood of a suicide attempt can be predicted prospectively. METHODS Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used...

OBJECTIVE Prior research has shown that a substantial portion of suicide decedents access health care in the weeks and months before their death. We examined whether this is true among soldiers. METHOD The sample included the 569 Regular Army soldiers in the U.S. Army who died by suicide on active duty between 2004 and 2009 compared to 5,690 matched controls. Analyses examined the prevalence ...