A Comparison of The Modified Sad Persons Scale with Psychiatric Recommendations for Deciding On Hospitalization In Patients Admitted To Ed Due To Suicide

Abstract

Objective: There are scales to decide hospitalization or follow up in patients presenting to the emergency department after suicide attempt. Modified SAD PERSONS scale (MSPS) is the scaling system for adult suicide generated using the initials of 10 major demographic risk factor in the literature. The aim of our study is to investigate the reliability of the MSPS patients who are evaluated in the emergency department after suicide attempt for deciding admission or discharging of patients in our population. Material-Method: Patients admitted to our emergency department with suicide attempts was evaluated by MSPS. All patients were evaluated by MSPS also consulted to a psychiatrist concurrently. MSPS suggestions are compared with psychiatry decisions. All data were inputted into SPSS analyzed statistically. Results: There were 205 patients totaly and 147of them were female. Psychiatrics decide hospitalization for 95% of patients MSPS score higher than 8. 131 patients MSPS score less than 6 are evaluated by psyhiatrics and 5 (3.8%) of them were decided for hospitalization. MSPS has sensitivity 90%, specificity 84%, positive predictive value 67%, negative predictive value 96% for deciding hospitalization when compared with psychiatric evaluation. Conclusion: Giving the decision of discharging or hospitalization of patients presenting in the emergency department after suicide attempt is a serious dilemmas for doctors working in the emergency department. There is a need for objective evaluation of such patients of in the emergency department. Although MSPS does not meet all of the requirements but can be used in the emergency department.