English

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Attempted suicide is a common clinical problem in general hospitals. Persons with Psychiatric disorders and poor quality of life are at increased risk for suicide. There are few case-control studies on psychiatric morbidity and quality of life of suicide attempters in India. AIMS: The aim of the study was to compare the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity and to study the quality of life in survivors following their first suicide attempt, to age and sex matched comparison subjects. SETTING AND DESIGN: This study is cross sectional, hospital based, case control study. Ethical clearance was given from the Ethical Committee of MGMC, Jaipur. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 100 cases of first suicide attempt (Group-I) were compared with an equal number of randomly selected controls (Group-II). Variables related to psychiatric morbidity and quality of life were analyzed. Schedule for clinical assessment in neuropsychiatry (SCAN) was used for psychiatric diagnosis as ICD-10 criteria, MADRS was used for assessing level of depression and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A) was used for assessing level of anxiety in both the groups. Quality of Life of both groups was assessed by WHOQOL-BREF version. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The two groups were compared by calculating percentages, applying chi-square test and t-test with appropriate statistical measures. RESULTS: 90% of the group-I compared to 25% of the group-II had at least one psychiatric disorder. Mood disorders (52%), neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (33%), and substance related disorders (28%) were the most common disorders. Psychotic disorders were diagnosed in 13% of cases. Alcohol dependence was third most common diagnosis that presented exclusively among males (16%). Mean of the total transformed score of WHO quality of life-bref was lower (56.58) in attempters for all the domains. CONCLUSION: Individuals who made first suicide attempt had high prevalence of psychiatric morbidity, had severe depression and low quality of life in comparison to the controls.