Some remarks on the incidence of successful suicide in psychiatric care

Abstract

The total number of people who have committed suicide in the years 1965–1966, 1970–1971 and 1975–1976 in one of the counties in Northern Sweden has been scrutinized to identify the occurrence of suicide among in-patients and among former psychiatric patients. In line with other studies in the literature an increase in the number of suicides among in-patients has been found. However, there was no increase in the proportion of former patients in the suicide series. There was an increase of incidence of suicide among the group of patients for whom one month had elapsed since their last contact with psychiatric care. There was no evidence of any increase in suicide among patients treated with neuroleptic drugs. The age at suicide has declined over time for both sexes.