Suicide Risk After First Attempt Can Persist for Years, Study Finds

A Canadian study has found that the risk of suicide after an initial attempt was 42 times higher than that of the general population and could persist for years.
Suicide Risk After First Attempt Can Persist for Years, Study Finds
Anti-suicide fences along the Iron Workers Memorial bridge linking Burnaby and North Vancouver. The newly installed fences are meant to prevent suicidal people from jumping from the bridge. The risk of suicide after an initial attempt is 42 times higher than that of the general population and could persist for years, according to a new study. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)
The Canadian Press
4/2/2015
Updated:
4/1/2015

TORONTO—A Canadian study has found that the risk of suicide after an initial attempt was 42 times higher than that of the general population and could persist for years.

In what is said to be the largest study of its kind, Toronto researchers tracked every person who came to a hospital emergency department in Ontario for self-poisoning between April 2002 and December 2010.

They identified 65,784 children and adults who survived the suicide attempt, including almost 18,500 teenagers.

Of the 65,000-plus patients discharged after a self-poisoning episode—the most common way of trying to take one’s own life—4,176 individuals died during the followup study period, 976 of them by suicide.

Among those who committed suicide were 107 teens, who took their own lives just over two years on average after their first attempt.



The risk of death from apparent accidents was also 10 times higher after that first attempt to end one’s life.

“I think the key message is that patients at all ages—both teenagers and adults—who present to hospital with a first episode of intentional self-poisoning are at a significantly increased risk of suicide over the ensuing decade,” said Dr. Yaron Finkelstein, lead author of the study published April 1 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Self-poisoning is often the result of overdosing on over-the-counter or prescription drugs or ingesting a noxious substance.

While some are treated and discharged from the ER, more severe cases are admitted for critical care or for psychiatric care if they appear unstable and likely to imminently harm themselves again.

“About 99 percent of those who reach hospital alive are surviving,” said Finkelstein, an emergency room physician at the Hospital for Sick Children.

“And that is the opportunity to identify them and implement prevention for subsequent attempts. Most individuals who eventually died by suicide used more violent methods on subsequent attempts, and only seven percent of them reached hospital alive.”

The average time to suicide following a first attempt was 18 months, the research found, and about a quarter took their own lives more than four years later.

“The suicide risk is durable over many years after the first presentation,” said Finkelstein. “And therefore we suggest that prevention efforts should target these populations because of the high risk, and at the same time those initiatives should be sustained over time.”

Factors that increase the risk of reattempted suicide are advancing age, being male, high socioeconomic status, and a diagnosis of depression and psychiatric care in the year preceding the first attempt, he added.

The study also found that initial self-poisoning attempts were associated with an increased risk of accidental death over the following decade, often due to falls from heights or motor vehicle crashes, without a suicide note.

“We suspect that some accidental deaths or deaths of indeterminate intent are in fact suicides that were not classified as such by investigating coroners in the absence of definitive proof of intent,” the authors write.

Dr. Jennifer Brasch, a psychiatrist in the Concurrent Disorders Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, said the study’s finding that an unsuccessful attempt continues to put a person at high risk for suicide “should be a flag to every doctor.”

“People need a primary-care physician or psychiatrist or psychiatric clinic that provides ongoing followup,” said Brasch, who was not involved in the study.