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Suicide in psychiatric hospital in-patients in Ireland

St Conal's Hospital, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland

D. Walsh, Inspector of Mental Hospitals and Health Research Board

73 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2, Ireland

EDITED BY MATTHEW HOTOPF

We were interested in the paper by Powell et al (2000) concerning suicide in psychiatric hospital in-patients. We conducted a 10-year review of the same phenomenon in Irish psychiatric hospitals (Corcoran & Walsh, 1999). Although this was not a case-control study in the sense of Powell et al, the findings were very similar, particularly in respect of the high proportion of suicides (70%) among in-patients who died ‘off the premises’ although ‘on the books’. The Irish suicide rate among acute in-patients (i.e. those in hospital for less than one year), at 319 per 100 000 of population (v. 118 per 100 000 for long-stay patients), is higher than that reported by Powell et al (137 per 100 000 admissions).

However, the validity of calculating inpatient suicide rates on the basis of an admissions denominator is questionable. It ignores the length of time during which each individual is at risk during a hospital year, and is based on admissions rather than on the individuals contributing to these admissions. Many patients may have had several admissions in any given year. We approached the problem by the person-year method which takes into account not only the number of admissions, but also their mean length of stay and other data which were available to us from the National Psychiatric In-Patient Reporting System. Our paper discusses the imperfections of this approach.

REFERENCES

Corcoran, E. & Walsh, D. (1999) Suicide in psychiatric in-patients in Ireland. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 16, 127-131.

Powell, J., Geddes, J., Deeks, J., et al (2000) Suicide in psychiatric hospital in-patients. Risk factors and their predictive power. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176, 266-272.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

This Article Full Text (PDF) Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Corcoran, E. Articles by Walsh, D. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Corcoran, E. Articles by Walsh, D.