Suicide and Primary Affective Disorders

Primary affective disorders, depressive or manic episodes in patients who have been psychiatrically well previously, or who have had episodes of mania or depression without other psychiatric illnesses (Robins and Guze, 1969), are associated with high suicide rates. The following data indicate that the suicide risk among these patients is over thirty times greater than that of the population without these disorders, and that the risk of suicide compared to other causes of death may be increased early in the course of the illness.