Attempted suicide in chronic schizophrenia

In a consecutive series of 127 chronic schizophrenics admitted to hospital, 70 (55.1 per cent) had attempted suicide. When compared with the chronic schizophrenics who had not attempted suicide, significantly more of the attempters had had a major depressive episode (45.7 per cent) and had received antidepressant medication (65.7 per cent). They also had histories of significantly more psychiatric admissions (a mean of 5.4 compared with 3.6). These findings are discussed.