Twelve-month prevalence of and risk factors for suicide attempts in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys

OBJECTIVE: Although suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, clinicians and researchers lack a data-driven method to assess the risk of suicide attempts. This study reports the results of an analysis of a large cross-national epidemiologic survey database that estimates the 12-month prevalence...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Borges, Guilherme, Alonso Caballero, Jordi, Kessler, Ronald C.
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Data de publicação:2010
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Repositório:Repositorio Digital de la UPF
OAI Identifier:oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/36976
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/36976
http://dx.doi.org/10.4088/JCP.08m04967blu
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Salut -- Enquestes
Salut mental -- Estadístiques
Suïcidi -- Estadístiques
Organització Mundial de la Salut
Descrição
Resumo:OBJECTIVE: Although suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, clinicians and researchers lack a data-driven method to assess the risk of suicide attempts. This study reports the results of an analysis of a large cross-national epidemiologic survey database that estimates the 12-month prevalence of suicidal behaviors, identifies risk factors for suicide attempts, and combines these factors to create a risk index for 12-month suicide attempts separately for developed and developing countries. METHOD: Data come from the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys (conducted 2001-2007), in which 108,705 adults from 21 countries were interviewed using the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The survey assessed suicidal behaviors and potential risk factors across multiple domains, including sociodemographic characteristics, parent psychopathology, childhood adversities, DSM-IV disorders, and history of suicidal behavior. RESULTS: Twelve-month prevalence estimates of suicide ideation, plans, and attempts are 2.0%, 0.6%, and 0.3%, respectively, for developed countries and 2.1%, 0.7%, and 0.4%, respectively, for developing countries. Risk factors for suicidal behaviors in both developed and developing countries include female sex, younger age, lower education and income, unmarried status, unemployment, parent psychopathology, childhood adversities, and presence of diverse 12-month DSM-IV mental disorders. Combining risk factors from multiple domains produced risk indices that accurately predicted 12-month suicide attempts in both developed and developing countries (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.74-0.80). CONCLUSIONS: Suicidal behaviors occur at similar rates in both developed and developing countries. Risk indices assessing multiple domains can predict suicide attempts with fairly good accuracy and may be useful in aiding clinicians in the prediction of these behaviors.