Abstract
BackgroundResearch on the temporal relationship of parental risk factors with offspring’s suicide attempt is scarce and a life course approach has not been applied to date. We investigated the temporal relationship of parental morbidity and mortality with offspring’s suicide attempt and whether any such association was modified by offspring’s age at attempt.MethodsWe designed a case-control study through linkage of Swedish registers. Cases comprised all individuals in Sweden born 1973–1983 with inpatient care due to suicide attempt (15–31 years of age) and with information on both biological parents (N = 15 193). Ten controls were matched to each case (National Patient register with national complete coverage). Conditional logistic and spline regressions were applied.ResultsParticularly for women, most parental markers showed the strongest effect sizes if exposure was short-term (within 2 years after exposure) and related to the mother. Especially short-term exposure to maternal inpatient care due to psychiatric diagnoses had a significantly stronger effect on suicide attempt risk in women compared to men. Regarding exposure to parental inpatient care due to psychiatric diagnoses, short-term as opposed to long-term (exceeding 2 years after exposure) effects were highest during adolescence and decreased significantly with age for female and male offspring, respectively.ConclusionsAlthough limited by the fact that data on parental morbidity and the outcome of suicidality were based on in-patient data only, the data suggest that the high risks of suicide attempt in case of exposure to parental psychopathology and suicidal behavior particularly during adolescence and the strong short-term effects associated with maternal psychopathology for female offspring are of direct clinical importance.
Highlights
Suicide attempt is a considerable and growing public health problem worldwide [1,2,3]
For that reason we wanted to test if effects of exposure to parental morbidity and mortality vary with regard to timing of exposure and with regard to age at offspring’s suicide attempt
The aims of the present study were three-fold: (i) to explore short- and long-term effects of parental markers of morbidity and mortality on the risk of suicide attempt in offspring; (ii) to investigate whether exposure to these parental markers before age 10 confers an increased risk of suicide attempt compared to exposure above this age; and (iii) to investigate whether any such effect is modified by age of offspring at attempted suicide
Summary
Suicide attempt is a considerable and growing public health problem worldwide [1,2,3]. In countries with available data with national coverage on hospital admission due to attempted suicide, like Sweden, considerable increases of inpatient care due to suicide attempt among women between 15 and 24 years of age have been reported between the mid 1990s and 2007 [2,5]. Similar associations could be shown with regard to the timing of parental psychiatric inpatient care on offspring’s risk for suicide attempt [12]. For that reason we wanted to test if effects of exposure to parental morbidity and mortality vary with regard to timing of exposure and with regard to age at offspring’s suicide attempt. Research on the temporal relationship of parental risk factors with offspring’s suicide attempt is scarce and a life course approach has not been applied to date. We investigated the temporal relationship of parental morbidity and mortality with offspring’s suicide attempt and whether any such association was modified by offspring’s age at attempt
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