Identifying risk factors for mortality among patients previously hospitalized for a suicide attempt. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Age-adjusted suicide rates in the US have increased over the past two decades across all age groups. The ability to identify risk factors for suicidal behavior is critical to selected and indicated prevention efforts among those at elevated risk of suicide. We used widely available statewide hospitalization data to identify and test the joint predictive power of clinical risk factors associated with death by suicide for patients previously hospitalized for a suicide attempt (N = 19,057). Twenty-eight clinical factors from the prior suicide attempt were found to be significantly associated with the hazard of subsequent suicide mortality. These risk factors and their two-way interactions were used to build a joint predictive model via stepwise regression, in which the predicted individual survival probability was found to be a valid measure of risk for later suicide death. A high-risk group with a four-fold increase in suicide mortality risk was identified based on the out-of-sample predicted survival probabilities. This study demonstrates that the combination of state-level hospital discharge and mortality data can be used to identify suicide attempters who are at high risk of subsequent suicide death.

publication date

  • September 16, 2020

Research

keywords

  • Suicide, Attempted
  • Suicide, Completed

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC7495431

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 85091128193

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1002/pds.2037

PubMed ID

  • 32938955

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 10

issue

  • 1