Citation

White RT, Gribble RJ, Corr MJ, Large MM. Gen. Hosp. Psychiatry 1995; 17(3): 208-215.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, New South Wales, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

7649465

Abstract

Jumping is the most common reported means of suicide in general hospitals. There have been no published reviews of suicides of nonpsychiatric inpatients since 1980. We describe 12 subjects who, between January 1980 and January 1992, jumped from a large general teaching hospital. Eight of them succumbed, providing a rate of suicide of 1.7 per 100,000 admissions. There were three clinical subgroups: those admitted after suicide attempts, the acutely delirious, and the chronically medically ill. Factors appearing frequently in the third subgroup were pain, dyspnea, transient confusion, poor prognosis, and recent adverse news. When we compared the hospital jumpers with 30 nonfatal jumpers who attended our Emergency Department, the medical and psychiatric profiles differed in the frequency of medical illnesses, advancing age, male gender, and absence of preexisting psychiatric illness. Proximity and ease of access to balconies and windows appeared to be highly relevant to the prevention of hospital jumping.

Language: en