Citation

Choo CC, Chew PKH, Ho RC. Biomed. Res. Int. 2019; 2019: e4652846.

Affiliation

Biomedical Global Institute of Healthcare Research & Technology (BIGHEART), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117599, Singapore.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Hindawi Publishing)

DOI

10.1155/2019/4652846

PMID

30766884

PMCID

PMC6350574

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Mental illness is a pertinent risk factor related to suicide. However, research indicates there might be underdiagnosis of mental illness in Asian suicide attempters; this phenomenon is concerning. This study explored prediction of diagnosis of mental illness in suicide attempters in Singapore using available variables.

METHODS: Three years of medical records related to suicide attempters (N = 462) who were admitted to the emergency department of a large teaching hospital in Singapore were subjected to analysis. Of the sample, 25% were diagnosed with mental illness; 70.6% were females and 29.4% were males; 62.6% were Chinese, 15.4% Malays, and 16.0% Indians. Their age ranged from 12 to 86 (M = 29.37, SD = 12.89). All available variables were subjected to regression analyses.

FINDINGS: The full model was significant in predicting cases with and without diagnosis of mental illness and accurately classified 79% of suicide attempters with diagnosis of mental illness.

CONCLUSIONS: The findings were discussed in regard to clinical implications in diagnosis and primary prevention.

Language: en