Suicide in psychiatric patients in Denmark, 1971–1981

A register-based analysis was made of hospital utilization and time of suicide among psychiatric patients in Denmark. Suicidal schizophrenic patients had long hospitalizations and their suicide frequency was comparatively constant. Patients with reactive psychoses and affective reactions had more often only one hospitalization and few bed/days. Forty percent of the latter group had previously attempted suicide and only one in six was offered outpatient follow-up. The highest age-, sex-, and diagnosis-specific suicide rates were found among middle-aged and elderly men with manic-depressive or reactive psychoses, and neuroses or personality disorders. Some groups of patients with affective reactions had comparatively high suicide rates, whereas those for patients with a main diagnosis of substance abuse corresponded to the average for the whole patient population. The average suicide rates for manic-depressive women corresponded to that for all male patients.