Suicide rate 22 years after parasuicide: cohort study

The rate of suicide for people who have had an episode of parasuicide is 100 times higher in the year following the episode than that of the general population. 1 Providing a high standard of care to patients who deliberately harm themselves could help to reduce this rate. 2 Long term follow up studies show that the increased rate of suicide persists. 3 However, the long term risk of suicide in patients in the United Kingdom is uncertain. We traced a consecutive sample of patients 22 years after they presented to a central London teaching hospital after an episode of parasuicide in the late 1970s.