Risk Factors Found For Suicide Attempt in Bipolar Patients

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Risk Factors Found For Suicide Attempt in Bipolar Patients

Suicide attempts among bipolar patients appear to be related to drug abuse, family history of affective disorders, and severe depressive episodes, reveals a team from Spain. Purificación López (Hospital Santiago Apóstol, Vitoria) and colleagues enrolled 169 patients with DSM-III-R bipolar I disorder. They analyzed sociodemographic, clinical, and family history variables, as measured by the Research Diagnostic Criteria?Family History.

In all, 56 patients made one or more suicide attempts. Analyses revealed that for these patients there was an earlier onset of illness, a history of hospital admission during depressive episodes, and a family history of affective disorders.

Although suicide attempts were more prevalent among patients with illness onset before the age of 25 years rather than after 25 years, this was no longer significant after controlling for the other three variables.

The researchers comment that rather than being an independent risk factor for suicide attempt, early age at onset could reflect the other factors.

'It is possible that incomplete maturity, along with the impulsiveness and aggressiveness associated with adolescence and early adult age, could explain drug abuse in young patients,' they write.

In addition, a link between suicidology and a history of depressive symptoms is logical, since suicide attempts tend to occur during depressive episodes rather than manic episodes.

Lopez et al comment that focusing on the treatment of drug abuse in young patients, and of depressive episodes serious enough to cause hospitalization could aid suicidal prevention.

'Certainly, strengthening personal relationships and decreasing social stress may also be important issues in the reduction of suicide risk in bipolar patients,' they add in their report in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

J Clin Psychiatry 2001; 62: 963?966

http://www.psychiatrymatters.md/news/2002/week_02/day_5/p_0000051124.asp

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